Perception and Reality Things Are Not Always As They Seem... What is the World Like for Other People? Overview - Vantage Point
- Line of Sight and Refraction Experiments
- Color Blindness Tests
- Rose-colored Glasses
- Thought Experiment
- Real-world Experiments
- Blindsight and Neglect Patients
- Homework Essay:
- Thought Experiments
Vantage Point - This is probably very obvious but it is a very important limit upon our ability to perceive reality correctly:
- Where you are relative to something else makes a difference.
- For example, if you are looking down on a soft drink can it looks different than if we view it from the side.
- We can only see things that are not obstructed by something else.
- We can determine if something is obstructed by drawing a straight line from our eyes to the object.
- Whatever we can draw a straight line to without it hitting anything else is in our line of sight
- This means that two people can have different perceptions of reality depending upon where they are seeing it from.
Refraction - Fill out the handout as you conduct the refraction experiment.
- Light Refraction Experiment
- (1) Make experimental observations (e.g. drawings) of light refraction of a pencil in water from different angles.
- (2) Think about additional methods of testing whether pencil is really bent.
Refraction Discussion - Did the pencil look the same or different when looking at it from different angles?
- Which of these angles is correct (the way the pencil is really shaped)?
- How can we test to see if the water really bends the pencil or if we are mistaken?
Dot Numbers: Do You See Any Numbers? Dot Figures: Are any of these objects in the bigger picture? Which one(s)? Perceptual Range - Normal humans can only see light that is in the visible light spectrum
- This is very similar to only being able to hear sounds in the audible frequency range
- (20 to 20,000Hz); some animals (like dogs) can hear high pitched sounds that we cannot
- Some people have a disorder of their eyes called red-green color blindness so that red and green look the same to them. Their perceptual range is smaller than other people.
Rose-colored Glasses - What would it be like if we always had rose (red) colored glasses on?
- What would Red look like to us? How about Blue? Think about it…
- Now pick up the transparency in front of you and look at different colored objects through it.
- Can you still tell a difference between the colors (red and blue, for example)?
- How about the difference between red and grey?
Color Chart Patients with Brain Injury - What is the difference between the pictures on the left
- and the copies of them made on the right?
- What is the difference between the drawings on the left and the copies of them made on the right?
Patient Asked to Cross Out All Lines - What is the pattern of lines being crossed out?
Neglect Discussion - How would you describe what is happening to these patients with brain injuries?
- It is not that they can’t see things on the left at all:
- If their eyes did not work all they would have to do is move the paper to the right and look at the side they could not see.
- These patients are unaware that these pictures or objects have left sides (even though they have all seen these objects (clocks or flowers) normally before their accidents).
Consciousness - Conscious – The things that you are actively aware of in your mind (it is not the same thing as your conscience; which is your moral sense)
- Subconscious – The things that are going on in your mind that you are not actively aware of (may or may not become aware of them later)
- Unconscious – When you are in a condition when you are not aware of anything going on in the world or your mind
Conclusions - Is everything that is going on in a person’s mind conscious or are some things subconscious?
- Is your perception of the world the same as everyone else’s even when observing the same thing or situation? Elaborate.
- Does information coming to your sense organs (like your eyes) mean that the information becomes conscious to you?
- What evidence do you have to support these conclusions?
Mysterious Case of Blindsight - A person has an injury to the parts of the brain that processes most (but not all) of the visual information from the eyes (but his eyes are fine).
- When asked whether he can see anything, the person reports they are totally blind (cannot see anything).
- When the person is told to guess what they were shown he/she does much better than pure chance.
- How is this similar to Neglect patients?
- Essay HW question:
- What do these patients (Blindsight and Neglect) tell us about the role the brain plays in perception?
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