Thursday, March 12, 2009

Seeing things?

Okwase and I noticed something really cool this week...You know the posters put up for science and technology day? well you may have noticed that the face has been blacked out and they say "guess who this is".And yes, like many of you, I guessed it was Mr. Kitching. Well now that the poster with the true face has been put up next to the blacked out one, you can see a face in the blacked out one. Take a look at it the next time you go by one. Sense perception limitations? Or reasoning playing with our eyes?

5 comments:

Julian H. Kitching said...

Juliejuu,

Where is this poster? I'm not sure of the one to which you are referring...

~ said...

she's talkin about the "evolve your mind" one

~ said...

I think its the whole prior-knowledge-you-see-what-you-want-to-see-thing.
Because, it was science and technology day, and Mr. Kitching 'connotes' these things(plus the figure sorta looked like the dude...),it makes sense that you would 'see' him in the fig.

I read somewhere about some experiment. Some people from different cultural backgrounds were shown a picture or something of the sort and all of them had different reports as to what it was.

So, just in case i haven't made much sense( someone is repeatedly breaking my concentration), I'm trying to say that you saw what you saw because you expected to see that based on prior knowledge/experience or (insert any other appropriate or related word)

Julian H. Kitching said...

Antye504 said:

"you saw what you saw because you expected to see that based on prior knowledge/experience"

Maybe we should distinguish between what we SEE and what we PERCEIVE in order to separate the arrangement of light rays that hits the eye (same for everyone standing in the same place at the same time) and the patterns detected or superimposed by the brain (can be different for each of us based on prior experience/knowledge).

One pattern that our brains seem particularly adept at finding/superimposing is that of a face (for example, check out the "face on Mars" - try googling that). It is extremely likely that this is an evolved psychological disposition (ie we are "pre-programmed" to perceive faces, even where they don't exist) - so in this case it's probably got less to do with experience and knowledge acquired during our lifetimes (although of course we acquire knowledge of PARTICULAR faces during our lives) - it is rather a tendency that we have all inherited as part of our biological heritage. After all, faces are essential in our lives for reading the minds of other people, and for recognizing those that are close to us, and so on.

But more generally, if you perceive what you perceive because you expected to see that based on prior knowledge/experience, what are the implications for different areas of knowledge? How do scientists attempt to overcome the problems that might arise from this phenomenon? Is it the case that artists make advantage out of it?

Julian H. Kitching said...

Sorry - you see how difficult it is to stick to strict use of language - the last paragraph should read:

But more generally, if you perceive what you perceive because you expected to PERCEIVE that based on prior knowledge/experience, what are the implications for different areas of knowledge? How do scientists attempt to overcome the problems that might arise from this phenomenon? Is it the case that artists make advantage out of it?

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