Final Post

The most interesting thing about perception is that every individual may perceive something different from another individual. Before this class I had never really thought about the various ways one simple object or action can be perceived by various people. Throughout this course the types of perception we covered in short would be visual, motion, color, depth and size, sound and speech and other contributing factors to create the world as we see it. The brain notices so much more than we can even realize because our brain works to ‘zone out’ the unimportant and to focus in on whatever we think is most important at the time. This makes me think of a conversation I had with fellow lifeguards at work today. In the middle of conversation a supervisor had said something and while I did not think I heard a word out of their mouth, my subconscious picked up on every word and I then it became apparent the directions the supervisor had given. The class helped me better understand how important perception is, not even to our own survival but the survival of every living thing. It was quite fascinating to investigate all the actions and working processes that help us create our worlds. Bottom-up processing is known to be a process based on any incoming stimulus that is encountered through the environment whereas top-down processing is based on one’s own personal knowledge and experience in life.

One of the most interesting subjects within perception is how individuals perceive color. I assume almost everyone knows someone who deals with color blindness, which is what makes it so interesting because you can read the chapter and relate it to your friends or family or someone in your life. Color is so important in our everyday life and I think it is completely taken for granted when considering some people cannot perceive certain colors which can make something as simple as driving more difficult to distinguish between the green yellow and red lights which in turn can lead to very dangerous situation. Monochromats are the ones to be considered ‘truly colorblind’ because it is so rare and causes the individual to have no functioning cones, meaning they only could rely on their rods. Basically that means a Monochromat can only perceive black, white and grey color tones.

This course relates to so many things outside of the class, I even use some of the information in daily conversation with those same fellow lifeguards now after learning it in the class. The whole idea about apparent motion versus real motion seemed to be the biggest conversation piece amongst us though because we work in and with water forty hours a week and after so much time with water you almost feel as if your gravity is off balanced and that you are in water when you are really not, or that things are moving in the pool such as the painted black lines for races when you know for certain they are not. I will continue to use this information learned and continue to try and understand all the distractions we overcome through selective hearing and attention.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyiZC-4oXhE

This is a video on YouTube that after staring in the middle for long enough you get the feeling like you are underwater. It is really neat, give it a shot!