Color and Gender

I discovered this little gem of a cartoon while researching infographics.  It's mostly whimsical with a lot of truth-guys do see colors differently.  The cartoon is free to share under the creative commons licensing (see below).  I suspect you could use it in a gender/perception portion of a unit.  If you go through their collection, many of the cartoons are gender and relationship based. Enjoy.

The original site is: http://thedoghousediaries.com/ 

From their site: 

Our comics are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License

Basically, you may share, copy, reprint, or publish these comics as long as you provide the source. Email us if you're still unsure.

posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Child Abuse Ad--Secret Message Only For Children

I was reading through my email today and found this phrase, "Spanish ad has a secret message only kids can see (video)." That took me to the page on Marketplace Radio show (NPR).
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/numbers/spanish-ad-has-secret-message-only-kids-can-see-video

The article and video describe the technology that makes adults see one image and kids younger than age ten see a different image.  Powerful material directed at kids who may be abused.


posted by Chuck Schallhorn

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Where do you find good music?

In January of 2007, the Washington Post did a social experiment about perception. They had Joshua Bell, one of the world top violinists, play during the morning commute at a Washington subway station. Though over 1,000 people walked by, few stayed to listen. The week prior Bell filled a concert hall in Boston with tickets selling for over $100.

The original Washington Post article which includes a short video clip of Bell playing can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

YouTube has a longer video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnOPu0_YWhw

Go to the Deems Weblog to read an article on the experiment. ( http://deems.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/perception/)

As a quick demo on perception, you might play just the audio portion of the subway video to your classes. Then play the audio of Bell playing in concert (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pp-Gl-70dSo. Lastly, show both clips and start what should be a good discussion on perception.

A special thanks to Adina Shmidman PhD, AP Psychology teacher in Bala Cynywd, PA for bringing this experiment to our attention.

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QuickTime Video Clips

Dr. Mark Mather of the University of Sussex, UK, author of Foundations of Perception, has developed QuickTime video clips demonstrating a number of perceptual concepts such as stereokinetic motion, shown to the right. Each video includes a brief explanation of the concept shown. Below you will find a listing of the concepts with hyperlinks to each video. The listing can be found at http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/George_Mather/Motion/index.html

Introduction
The Motion After-Effect
Four-Stroke Apparent Motion
Random Dot Kinematograms
Second-Order Motion
Plaid Motion
Motion Capture
Direction Repulsion
Kinetic Depth
Stereokinetic Motion
Biological Motion
Implicit Figure Motion
Transformational Motion
Shadow Motion
Two-Stroke Motion

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Exploritorium - Perception Snacks

The Exploritorium has developed "hands on" activities they call "Snacks". Below is a listing of the Perception Snacks. Click on the individual Snack or go to http://www.exploratorium.edu/snacks/iconperception.html for the listing.

Each snacks provides a detailed description of how to assemble any equipment needed and how to demonstrate the perception concept.

Students could be assigned any number of the snacks to complete on their own and present them to the class or they could do the Snack as an extra credit project. Teachers could use the Snacks to create their own class demonstrations.

Snack Name - Description

• Afterimage - A flash of light prints a lingering image in your eye.
• Anti-Gravity Mirror -It's all done with mirrors!
• Benham's Disk - A rotating black-and-white disk produces the illusion of color.
• Bird in the Cage - Stare at a color and see it change.
• Blind Spot - To see or not to see.
• Bronx Cheer Bulb - Some lightbulbs appear to wiggle and flash when you give them the raspberry, but the only thing wiggling is you.
• Cardboard Tube Syllabus - Your brain combines information from your eyes in surprising ways.
• Cheshire Cat - Make a friend disappear, leaving only a smile behind.
• Colored Shadows - Shadows are not all black and white.
• Depth Spinner -What happens when you get off the merry-go-round?
• Disappearing Act -If you want to stay hidden, you'd better stay still.
• Everyone is You and Me -See yourself become someone else.
• Fading Dot - Now you see it; now you don't. An object without a sharp edge can fade from your view.
• Far 0ut Corners -Your experience of the world influences what you see.
• Gray Step - Without a boundary, it's hard to distinguish different shades of gray.
• Jacques Cousteau in Seashells - There's more to seeing than meets the eye
• Magic Wand - See pictures in thin air.
• Moire Patterns - When you overlap materials with repetitive lines, you create moire patterns.
• Peripheral Vision - We are not usually aware of our eyes' limitations.
• Persistence of Vision - Your eye and brain hold on to a series of images to form a single complete picture.
• Pinhole Magnifier - Who needs expensive optical equipment?
• Proprioception - Even with our eyes closed, we have a sense of body position - where our arms and legs are, for example, and that we are moving them. Muscles, tendons, joints and the inner ear contain proprioceptors, also known as stretch receptors, which relay positional information to our brains.
• Pupil - Your pupil changes size to control how much light enters your eye.
• Real Image - Create the image of an object in space using a $2 ornament.
• Seeing Your Blind Spot - See your blind spot.
• Seeing Your Retina - You can use a dim point of light to cast a shadow of the blood supply of your retina onto the retina itself. This will allow you to see the blood supply of your retina, and even your blind spot.
• Sense of Taste - Receptors on our tongues bind to chemicals in our food and relay the information about the chemicals to our brain. Surprisingly, all those wonderful tastes are transmitted to our brains through only four types of receptors on our tongues - those for sweet, sour, salt and bitter.
• Size and Distance - A clueless way to determine the size of an object.
• Spinning Cyclinder - A spinning rod with a mark near one end is set rotating and spinning at the same time. Amidst the blur of the spinning cylinder, the mark appears three times, forming a stationary triangle.
• Squirming Palm - This visual illusion makes the palm of your hand appear to squirm and twist.
• Thread the Needle - Using two eyes gives you depth perception.
• Vanna - A face seen upside down may hold some surprises.
• Whirling Watcher - When you view short bursts of moving images, you see some interesting effects.

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Newborn perception

I know, I know, about every other blog post from me is from the podcast "Radio Lab", but I just can't resist: one of their latest shows, "After Birth", covers (among other topics) newborn human perception. Most of the podcast is devoted to an interview with Charles Fernyhough, developmental psychologist and author of the very cool-looking book "A Thousand Days of Wonder". Some of the newer research findings blew me away! Examples:

• The lens in our eyes gradually yellows as we age, so babies probably see much more vivid blues and greens than we do
• When infants see simple visual stimuli, neurons in their visual cortex fire as expected, but neruons in their auditory cortex ALSO FIRE! They are possibly "hearing" visual images? So we're born with a form of "synaesthesia" but we grow out of it? Wowza!
  

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Prism goggles are even cooler than we thought they were!

I hope everyone out there has a set of prism goggles - either the goggles that shift visual perception left/right or up/down. They are easy to make (and I think you can purchase them off the web, but I can't find the source right now - I always made mine). the good folks at "Mind Hacks" recently talked about research that ties wearing prism goggles to changes in the perception of time! The research looks preliminary, but this is still darn fascinating, provocative, and unexpected! If you use prism goggles in your classroom, you may be able to replicate part of the study?

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Terrific Gestalt examples

Graphicdesignblog.org has a great post of corporate logos with "hidden messages" that are also perfect examples to use when discussing Gestalt psychology. From closure to figure-ground to continuity (and more!) here are 25 examples that would be great for students to dissect.

I used the FedEx logo in class earlier this year -- I found it on a page of Gestalt examples and had no idea what principle it represented! When I finally saw the arrow I knew I had to use that example in class.

Do you have other similar stories or favorite Gestalt examples? Share them in the comments!

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2009 Illusion of the Year

The 2009 Illusion of the year has been announced! And its a good one - a powerful motion illusion. It works well for me on my screen and I bet it would work well for an entire class if it was projected. My challenge with these perceptual illusions is always relating them to the perception principles in the text (they are often VERY complex) but the description provided for this illusion is pretty clear. The web site also allows viewers to change the parameters of the illusion, etc.

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Teller - Cogitive Psychology of Magic

Anyone seen a Penn and Teller show? I'd love to see them live someday, but until then I'll just continue to read and be fascinated by their original, skeptical perspective on the universe. This article from WIRED about the connections Teller sees between magic, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience might be a great way to "wind down" after the AP exam? Fascinating stuff about how magicians use principles from perception to "fool" audiences. There is a group of neuroscientists at Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona working with magicians to identify these principles (the group already published their research in Nature)

Here's a quote that provides a sense of what the article is about:
"By reverse-engineering these deceptions, Macknik hopes to illuminate the mental loopholes that make us see a woman get sawed in half or a rabbit appear out of thin air even when we know such stuff is impossible. Magicians were taking advantage of these cognitive illusions long before any scientist identified them."

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Optical Illusion Websites

Do a Google search for "optical illusions" and you will get almost two million listings. If anything, there is an overabundance of websites. A few include:

The Planet Perplex Website at http://www.planetperplex.com/en/index.html.

The Might Illusions Blog at http://www.moillusions.com/ has postings going back to February of 2006.

Many people love Michael Bach's site at http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/, especially the following eyes.

The Exploratorium in San Francisco has their illusion exhibit at
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/f_exhibits.html

Please leave your favorite illusion website in the comments section below.

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