Final Post

General Overview
I learned a lot in this interesting perception class. I loved how interactive the class was and rather than learning via boring slides or posts, we were able to not only learn from an interactive and visual blog, but from one another and how we each viewed the class. Rather than having to keep up week after week with tedious assignments, we were able to simply log onto our blog and either view the professor's posts or able to post our on on a topic of our choice. This allowed a lot of freedom with the class, which I greatly appreciated. I also liked the fact that when it came down to posting our own posts, we had complete freedom, as long as the topic was within the realm of our text. So not only did I learn about perception, but about blogging as well, a skill that will certainly carry over into other aspects of my life.
Now let's get down to all that was learned about the topic at hand, perception. In this class you are able to better understand how the mind perceives the world around it. However, its not just about how we perceive things visually, but by our sense of touch, smell, and even taste You may be surprised to know that your taste buds are for more than just enjoying your meal. This class is one that any student can take and benefit from, because we could all use a little understanding how we interact and function in the world around us. I know that I learned a great deal from this class. You will learn why things may appear to look a certain way and how your brain acts for us to perceive things, but don't take my word, take the class yourself!

Favorite Part
Hands down, my favorite part of the class was in chapter 10, the topics on illusions and size constancy. I think this was my favorite because you experience it so much in your daily life. I especially liked the Ames room, where simply due to it's unique physical layout, to the naked eye if 2 people are standing on opposites sides of the room, one appears to be a giant and the other much smaller than average size. The observer views the room through a peep hole and it is because of this the women appear so distorted. In actuality the one woman is standing extremely far from the observer, but they don't know that. This is just so fascinating to me because when our eyes are unable to see the whole picture our brain can play tricks on us, sometimes with us even knowing.

Extension
After taking this class, you can't help but apply what you learned to the outside world. For example watch two of your favorite childhood movies such as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory or Alice and Wonderland. These two movies make use of optical illusions to achieve their visual goals. These movies occurred prior to technological advancements in movie making, and therefore used the fact that our eyes can play tricks on us to make certain scenes appear certain ways. Also, after reading about change blindness and inattentional blindness, I find my self paying closer attention to things, with out focusing all my attention onto one thing, this way if something changes or occurs I will be more likely to notice a change, and there fore better perceive my environment.