Perception is a very interesting class. This must be the case: perceiving the world around us is something that is done by everyone all the time. The colors we see, things we feel, music we hear, and food we taste and smell are all essentially the results of chemical input into certain brain areas. I think that it is fascinating that people generally think that "they" are in control of everything that happens in their lives; studying perception shows, very clearly too, that this is not the case.
For example, take the spinning room experiment done by Lee and Aronson in 1974. This showed that both toddlers and adults alike will lose their balance and sway or even fall if they are in a room in which the walls physically move back and forth. This demonstrates the notion that senses do not work in isolation; each sense provides information to the others. This is also clearly seen when tasting food. If a good tasting food (or a good smelling odor) is labelled as a foul tasting food (or odor) the person who reads the label is more likely to give the food or smell bad remarks. Likewise, labeling a bad odor as a good odor will make it smell "better". I also found this interesting, because scent is the strongest sense attached to memory, yet it seems to be the most variable, the one most likely to be interpreted by other stimuli or sensory information.
My favorite part of the course was learning about how we see and hear. There are so many beautiful colors and sounds in the world, but humans can only perceive a fraction of them! The eye, which, as I said earlier, we like to believe never fails us (why do people like to say "I'd have to see it to believe it?") is actually fooled quite easily. Black squares laid out across a white background - a Hermann grid - fools the eye into seeing gray in between the black squares. Eyes adapt to changes in light and dark, and during this time, colors we thought we a certain shade at one time will change shades as our eyes adapt to our surroundings. I found this clip on Ted.com a while ago, and I thought it was very enjoyable and shows just exactly how easily our eyes can get fooled.
I discussed hearing in an earlier post, but as a recap, I think that the concept of auditory stream segregation is very cool. It is a way to play a melody with alternating high and low to notes to fool the listeners into believing they are hearing two separate melodies.
I think that if people learn more about how their brains' interpret the world around them, which likely is not the way they see things, people will stop and take time to really appreciate what they are perceiving. For example, when sitting in front of a classical painting, one should take the time to realize all the nuances both regarding the painting and the way the eyes perceive the painting. Just as our senses interact with one another, we too should appreciate the greater extension of this notion, that everything that happens has an affect on something else.
Showing posts with label final. Show all posts
Showing posts with label final. Show all posts
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Sunday, June 13, 2010
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.
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.
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