These rules can also however restrict the critical and creative aspect that is necessary for growth. This is so because they restrict any new information that may lead to what is perceived as chaos. Traditions play the same role. They are established in order to maintain a certain status quo for the purpose of organizational unity. However, an excess of such unity can also mean that no new thought is available or stimulated to create new growth for the future.

Cultural blocks is an important perceptual block that can often lead to prejudice or ostracization from a group. A cultural block requires conformity to the accepted ways of thinking and acting within a cultural group. Daring to differ from these established traditions often result in a sense of discomfort for the individual. Cultural blocks often lead to prejudice against those that do not look, act, or think according to the established status quo, and can lead to actions such as mild or extreme prejudice against certain groups of people.

Emotions can also act as a block to accurate or creative perception practices. According to Davis, anger, fear, anxiety, hatred, and in some cases love can have a detrimental effect upon creative and critical thinking. These emotions lead to irrational thinking and action, which blocks creativity and prohibits critical thinking.

Memory plays a role in all of the above thinking practices and perceptual blocks. According to Patricia M. Jones (2009), it scientists do not yet fully understand the functions of memory. However, its manifestation in the above-mentioned blocks...

Experiences are remembered and observed phenomena are classified accordingly.
According to Jones, the latest thinking describes memory as a set of "stores" and a set of "processes." The stores contain memorized information, while the processes determine the behavior that will result from such information. Jones organizes the memory function according to three stores and three processes. The stores include Sensory Information, Short-Term, and Long-Term information. The processes include encoding, maintenance, and retrieval.

The memory process functions in much the same way as the perception process described above: Sensory information is presented to the Sensory Information Store. The individual makes a choice to attend to or ignore the information. Ignored information tends to be forgotten, while information that is perceived as significant, is stored. A further choice is made of whether to enter the information in the long- or short-term memory. Long-term memory would then include elements such as learned information, familiar places, familiar locations, and so on.