FINAL BLOG ENTRY

 

Object recognition was probably one of the most interesting things we discussed in class. In particular, the conversation about inattentional and change blindness fascinated me. Even though I discussed it in a previous blog, I could not help but want to look further into it. In my previous discussion, I found out that one of my friends did not fall victim to either change or inattentional blindness. My other friend, however, was susceptible to both change and inattentional blindness. When I viewed the different videos, I found that sometimes, I didn’t notice changes in scene and other times, I did. However, at the time of the first posting, I did not really understand the difference between change and inattentional blindness.

Change blindness is when you do not notice a change in a scene because you are focused on something else in the scene. Examples of this are when there is a scene of a man and a woman talking, and a something disrupts your focus, like a camera angle change and you do not notice that the woman’s shirt has changed color. However, change blindness can also occur without a disruption in the scene. This is actually when I missed changes the most. This is when, for example, you are focused on something in the scene, maybe the people in the middle, and you do not notice the disappearance or appearance of a building in the background. Inattentional blindness is slightly different. When you are involved in a task, in a chaotic environment, it is very possible to miss something new that has entered the viewing area if it is unrelated to the task. An example of this is the scene that was shown in class of the group of kids passing a ball and a gorilla walks through the middle. Many people missed the gorilla because they were busy counting the number of passes one of the students received.

After looking through the section about the two again, I realized there was more to my ability to notice change and not notice it than I thought. After watching the three videos for the first blog, I decided that I paid more attention to scenes that had people in them than those that did not. However, to test this further,  I went to the visual cognition lab website and looked at all the video trials available. When I viewed the inattentional blind examples, I never missed interruptions in the scene. I found out that my inability to notice change only occurred in the change blindness trials. Even though it did not happen in every example, it did happen quite often.  Watching all the different change blindness examples, refuted my previous assumption that I did not miss changes in the scene when change was related to people. I found out, that sometimes I would catch changes when there weren’t people in the scene and that I missed changes of wardrobe and accessories of people.

So now, while I know that I am not susceptible to inattentional blindness, I have no idea what makes me display change blindness sometimes and other not. Maybe it is that I just get lucky and happen to direct my attention at the correct part of the scene sometimes. Regardless, I truly believe that the book is right. We do not have the processing ability to maintain a high-quality representation of most visual scenes. The bigger the scene the harder it is to maintain a high-quality representation at one time. Our eyes are amazing but they do have their limits, just like the rest of our senses.

-Dawn

 

diving deeper into art

Linear perspective, texture gradient, aerial perspective, size, occlusion, and shading are all things that can be used to indicate depth in an image. This question allowed me to examine art from across periods. Rather than focus on pre-renaissance, I decided to look at early works and compare them with later works. I feel as if Egyptian art is a good indication of poor depth representation. In the image I examined, there are only a couple indications of depth. First is occlusion, which is clear from the placement of the arms. Secondly, in order to show the presence of two feet, one leg is slightly ahead of the other. Aside from these two things, no understanding of depth is demonstrated.

In a pre-renaissance painting that I looked at, there seem to be an attempt at a demonstration of size. However, in the front of the picture, the people are poorly layered in a ship. In the back, they are trying to show size differentiation by showing mountains that are smaller. When something appears smaller than it should be, as a viewer, I perceive that it is farther away. Like with the mountain in the picture, it is smaller than a person who is also in the picture, It allows me to assume that the mountain is not just small, but that it is far away.

A famous renaissance painting, Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus includes shading, and linear perspective. The angel’s robes are shaded to indicate the folds. Also the shell at the bottom has a shadow in the water. The linear perspective is demonstrated in the background as the coastline winds around and finally vanishes. This indicates the continued progress in demonstrating depth. Things like texture gradient and aerial perspective show up later in artistic history. Depth is one of the hardest things to show, but 2D art has progressed over time. Being able to produce depth on a flat surface is a skill that is hard to come by.

Knowledge is beautiful

While I do sympathize with Keats, I do not share in his lament. His basic complaint is not just with Newton, but also with scientific discovery in general. He laments the deconstruction of mystery. Many people throughout history have agreed with Keats. The suggestion that some things be left unknown is a familiar one. However, would disagree with this in most situations. I do not believe that ignorance is bliss.

 

In the case of Newton, I actually believe the demystifying of the rainbow, creates this greater awe for the human mind. The fact is, we still perceive color. It is kind of amazing actually. The fact that light itself is colorless and the objects are colorless, yet when they are perceived through the human eye, brilliant color combinations are created. Even though a rainbow is pretty on its own, understanding the science behind it allows for a person to gain a new appreciation for the view that they never could have without the knowledge behind it. Science and understanding, bring new excitement to any occurrence.

 

This whole conversation on color and perception makes me think of the book the Giver. It has been my favorite book since I read it in elementary school. The basic premise is that the people live in a society where everyone is has a specific role and it is very organized. Over time, the elders have eliminated any sensations that provoke an emotional response. So while people still get married, they do not have sex; they are given two children that they must raise. Color has been eliminated so that people do not see race or ethnicity. Also, other things, like music, and art have been taken away from the society, because they are not seen as practical necessities. This in their opinion has allowed for a creation of a more perfect society. However, there is one boy, who sees color, he notices the red of an apple. So if this were a real place, then maybe he is the only one who has cones and the ability to perceive color. The rest of the people could have had their cones removed. So in the Giver society, the inability to see color is actually desirable. By understanding it is in the control of the people and not the object, the society has been able to remove color.

overcompensation?

First off, it is important to remember that in when people perceive, they are using all their senses. So on one hand, the loss or damage of one sense will not affect your ability to perceive horribly, because the other four are still working to create a complete picture. However, from another perspective, you could feel as if the picture is never complete, because some important part of the picture is not being obtained.

 

 

As far as vision is concerned, there are few different ways that vision can develop abnormally. We discussed: crossed eyes, lazy eyes and monocular defocus. Monocular defocus would look normal in one eye but blurred in the other. This would probably hinder many people’s ability to drive and do other things. Just as having an eye patch hindered my ability. I actually think blurry vision might be more difficult to manage than no vision at all. The good thing is about this difficulty is that it can be managed with the use of glasses and probably contacts. The glasses would just have to have a different prescription. The other two, are more difficult to deal with. Many people recommend surgery for strabismus because they say that is tough to handle, especially for children. In some discussions of strabismus, people say that crossed eyes can become a lazy eye.  So many would recommend that crossed eyed be surgically corrected.

 

 

On another note, something I talked about after Wednesday’s class was the improvement of other senses, when one is not fully developed. As with babies, their vision is not fully developed at birth. What seems to be the strongest sense at birth is the sense of smell. As we have talked about earlier in class, babies can recognize their mother’s scent, almost immediately. Maybe the sense of smell is so acute at birth because the other ones are not developed as well at that point.

did you see that?

After watching the demonstration of the basketball game and the gorilla, I decided I wanted to find out if any of my friends would experience inattentional blindness. I showed the three videos on our class blog page to two of my friends. The one friend, Kavitha, demonstrated inattentional blindness on all three videos. The other friend, Maria, did not show any signs of inattentional blindness and noticed the changes in all three clips. Strangely enough, I only demonstrated inattentional blindness on the video of the farm house and the grass. With all three of us experiencing different things, I was able to see that this phenomenon is very subjective.  

After watching the three videos my friend Kavitha began to worry. She said that if she missed all three things in these videos; how many other things does she miss in life? We all started thinking about it and realized that actually Kavitha does have a tendency to miss things. For example, earlier today the three of us were walking down the sidewalk and I tripped. Both Maria and I started laughing and Kavitha looked over at us with a puzzled look. She completely missed the fact that I had almost fallen; she was too busy paying attention to what Maria had been talking about. On the other hand, Maria is always the one who notices the little things. She will notice when the slightest thing changes. Whether it be something in her field of vision, or if it is something that has been moved in her room. 

 I guess I would have to be the third type of person. The person who sometimes notices changes and other times does not. I think that maybe this has to do with something else we have talked about recently. It may be related to object vs. Face recognition. I noticed when there was a change and it was a person/animal, but did not notice the change when it was in the environment. I put most of my focus on animated living things. I must be comfortable just getting the gist of the surrounding but when it comes to people, I need to see the details.

seeing double

The duplex solution of vision is all related to the convergence. In order to have higher sensitivity, greater convergence is needed, but in order to have better resolution, there cannot be a lot of convergence. So, in our eye rather than having to choose to have either high resolution or high sensitivity, there are two different types of cells that work to allow both things. These are the rods and the cones. When the ganglion-cells receive more input from the rods they converge more. There are also ganglion-cells that receive a higher input from the cones; they converge less. The ones that receive more from the rods are used in dim lighting situations. A consequence of this is that, it is harder to read in poor lit areas. This is because the eye has difficulty distinguishing between individual letters in the darker places, even if you can see everything; your spatial resolution is diminished in that situation.

 

On the other hand, when there is less convergence, you will have better spatial resolution. So when it is light out it, it is better to do things like read, or sight see. There is a period of time, when ganglion cells are receiving input from rods and cones. This is when your vision is mesopic. This is the optimal time to do something like reading. Your eyes are comfortable and are at their optimum performing state.

 

Another consequence of this duplex solution to vision is the Purkinje shift. During the day when it is sunny, the lightest and brightest color that we perceive is a yellow. At dusk, this switches and the brightest color is a greenish color. It made me think about dressing for a party. During the day, the best color to wear if I want to get noticed is a yellowish color. But as it becomes evening, a greenish outfit would be the best choice. Looking around campus, I did notice that during the day, the yellow Lwala benefit shirts looked really amazing and cool. And then I thought about how on St. Patrick’s Day, everyone was wearing green. I actually do feel like I noticed the green more at night than I did during the day. So maybe this is  occurring even when I don’t realize it.

what did you say?

In class we discussed this phenomenon in two different ways. First was what occurs when listening to a song. This is a mistake I make so often. Secondly we talked about how this often occurs when you are hearing a foreign language. And finally this made me think of how children will often make a mistake like a Mondegreen and carry it with them throughout their lives.

While trying to think of songs that I never remember the words to, I was reminded of a comedy routine that Ellen DeGeneres did. In one of her stand up shows, she actually starts talking about how awkward it can be when you finally realize that you haven’t been singing the right words to a song. One song that she talked about especially was the song Respect by Aretha Franklin. No one knows the words to that song. It says R-E-S-P-E-C-T (chakta, p c t?) sock it to me, sock it to me…and so on. On one website it says that the song says “take care, TCB”. After reading it, I thought to myself, huh?…I guess that does make sense. So it is really funny that until this assignment I just accepted the fact that there weren’t real words to this part of the song.

The second mistake made me think of my friend’s parents. When they took Spanish in high school, they were not taught grammar and vocabulary in the same way that we are now. Instead they were taught sentences. They listened to tapes and memorized sentences. Now, almost 40 years later, they still know the sentences, and they know what the translation is but cannot tell me any individual words in the sentence. They only know that collectively what the words mean. I was really frustrated though, because I have taken Spanish for ten years and could not understand what they were saying until they told me it in English. What I realized was that when they were reciting the sentences, they were just blending all the words together. After finding out what it meant in English, I was able to pick out each word and separate them. They however, could not. So when I asked them afterwards, what “lo siento” meant they could not tell me. Even though, it was a phrase in the sentence they had just said to me. So like the problems with songs, until I broke it down, my friend’s parents had no idea what the actual words were.

The final story I have to tell is about my oldest brother Brad. My brothers are 3 years apart. So when Kevin, my middle brother was born, Brad was only three. As most parents do, my parents happened to be talking baby talk to Kevin and tickling him. They said “gichee, gichee, goo” or something to that effect. Well Brad being three or four at the time, didn’t really understand the idea of baby talk and assumed that the words must mean something. So later when Brad was playing with Kevin he tried to use the phrase. However when Brad said it, it actually meant something, he said, “I’m gonna get your goo”. He assumed that this was what the game was, that my parents were trying to tickle his younger brother in a certain place or something. To this day, everyone in my family will say “I’m gonna get your goo” when playing with the little kids in our family.

Getting past the superficial

2/16/08 

When people see, all they can see is the surface. It is like judging a book by its cover. Until you hear what someone has to say, you don’t really have an idea of who they are. That is what makes people unique. It is their content and character that you learn about when they speak. So when you can’t hear what someone has to say, you don’t really understand who they are. Being able to see someone doesn’t let you know who they are. Hearing someone really allows you to know them as a person. People might not look the same every day, but a person’s voice is always the same.

Sight is superficial when it comes to people. It is important in the understanding of inanimate things, but you don’t get the whole (no pun intended) picture just by seeing a person. I think that in many ways that a person’s appearance does not accurately tell you who they are. People can cover a lot more up visually than they can verbally. For example, in all of the cheesy John Hughes’ 80s films, everyone looks like a stereotype. But when they finally talk, like in Breakfast Club, they realize they all can value one another. So I guess the point I am making is kind of a drastic one, but in my opinion being blind, can almost be a gift. Well at least in terms of dealing with people. You can bypass the superficial exterior and just focus on the content.

up in smoke

2/9/08

I thought the studies that examined the effects of smoking on taste and smell were very interesting. According to the book, smoking only effects smell but not taste. However, it does effect people’s perception of flavor. This indicates the important relationship between taste and smell. As a former smoker, I was pleased to find out just one more reason to be happy that I quit smoking.

 One study discussed in the chapter indicated that the more people smoke, the worse their ability to identify different odors. Fortunately because olfactory sensory neurons have a short life cycle, once someone quits smoking their ability to sense odors is restored. This leads many people to believe that they sense of smell is actually better than it was before they smoked. This is probably just because their nearest reference point is from when they were smoking.

The study in the next chapter refutes the fact that smoking hinders a person’s ability to taste (McBurney and Moskat, 1975). Smokers can identify taste solutions as well as non smokers according to their research. However, This does not mean that smokers claim that they enjoy food more after they quick smoking is false. This is where the connection between taste and smell becomes so important. According to Mozel et al., (1969), the ability to identify food is hindered when you can not smell the food. Since a smokers ability to smell is weakened, their ability to enjoy the aromatic experience of food is hurt as well. So if you can’t smell as well because you smoke, the food won’t taste as good when you eat it. The bottom line is, don’t smoke!

I remember that smell

2/2/08

My favorite smell reminds me of home. The smell is cheer laundry detergent. My family has always used the same kind. It makes me really happy to smell it. It makes me feel refreshed and safe and happy all at once. When I was younger I would always cuddle up to my mother on the couch and I could always smell our detergent. So when I smell “cheer” I think of my mother, and I think of my home. I think of getting in my bed at night and being incredibly excited when there were fresh clean sheets on the bed. I have always liked to wrap myself up in my covers like a caccoon, so I have always completely taken in the smell of the sheets. It helps me go to sleep at night and puts me at peace.

It is interesting that my favorite smell is something that I remember most from in my bed. Perhaps it is because going to sleep is pretty much always the same. No matter where I am, whether I was at home, or now at college, or somewhere in the future…When I am lying in bed things are all the same. I can relax and I am comfortable there. I don’t have to try and it is just me in my bed. The smell of cheer is so comforting to me. Any time I am in a bad mood, I can always just put clean sheets on my bed and feel good.

-Dawn