Just this passed semester, your blog team had conducted a research based on a question posed Banerjee, Chatterjee, and Sinha (2012) regarding the association of brightness and darkness to moral judgment.
Given that light and dark appear to be linked to moral behavior, can ambient light affect the perception and evaluation of morally ambiguous behaviors?
Their original study showed that when participants were asked to recall a good deed they have done in the past, they judged the room they were in to be brighter while participants who were asked to recall a morally wrong behavior in the past, judged the room to be darker (Banerjee, et. al., 2012).
Our research aimed to find out whether the brightness of the room affected the participants' judgments of a morally ambiguous behavior, and guess what? It did, and what more, participants who were in the bright condition gave softer, kinder forms of punishment and were more inclined to give a reward to the doer of the morally ambiguous behavior while participants in the dark condition gave harsher, stricter punishments and none were inclined to give any form of reward to the doer of the ambiguous behavior.
Light and dark have always been connected with good and evil. In media, villains, demons and evil are always depicted in dark colors while protagonists, angels and goodness are depicted in a brighter more vibrant manner.
Can you tell which ones are the angels of Paradiso and which ones are the infernal demons of Inferno from the pictures on the left? The pictures come from a game called Bayonetta and in this game, Paradise and angels are depicted in bright hues of white and gold while demons and infernal representations are depicted in hues of black, purple and red. In the Holy Bible, Jesus is known as the "Light of the world" while Lucifer is known as the "Prince of darkness" who disguises himself as an "Angel of light" to trick the people of the world. When I tell you to imagine heaven, do you imagine a dark and dim place or a bright, well-lit place?
Yin (black) and Yang (white): Respectively, negative and positive energies
Clinical depression is something that isn't that much explored here in the Philippines. Sometimes, people just use the term colloquially saying they are "depressed" with a meaning that they are sad or heartbroken or feeling under the weather. Maybe you have used the term to refer to those moods as well. However, because of this, people who are clinically depressed almost always end up getting judged to be just "dramatic" or being "irresponsible" when they are experiencing the bouts of depression. Sometimes, we just assume it is temporary and tell them to cheer up or worse, tell them that there are worse things in life and they should think of their problem in comparison to others. I've recently witnessed three people who were/are depressed and it isn't something they can just snap out of.
Depressed people often report seeing the world as a dull, grey world. You can often see these dark, somber colors being used by artists in their works and paintings depicting sadness and depression. It isn't actually just an artistic representation. Studies showed that there are biological reasoning behind these phenomena.
Depression actually affects your visual perception by affecting cognitive functioning. Bubl and his coworkers (2010) found that people who were depressed had an impaired contrast perception as opposed to healthy individuals. The study showed that the depressed participants were less able to detect contrast differences in black and white checkerboard patterns shown to them. This was shown through the electrical recordings of their retinal activities measured through electrodes attached near the participants' eyes. The more severe the depression, the less were the electrical responses of their retina to contrasts. Antidepressants and other medications didn't make a difference on the results of the study.
This study is actually very helpful in the future assessment of depression among individuals. These electrical responses provide psychiatrists with more objective means of measurement for depression and its severity among those affected with it. Having this dulled contrast perception can prolong the depressive state of the individual and can feed into the depressed person's mood.
Eating disorders and the perception of weight
When I first saw the picture on the left on 9gag months ago which was used as a meme, the first thing that came on my mind was "I want to look like her". Demented right? Here we see a girl depicted as having an eating disorder yet most girls probably die to be like her. Unfortunately sometimes, it is applicable literally.
Weight and appearance are things highly regarded as important in our current society. They put emphasis on thinness through promoting diet pills like Xenical, exposing thin celebrities and fashion models, introducing fad diet plans, exercise regimen and whatnot. Often, heroines introduced in movies, considered to be desirable are the ones who are thin while heavier celebrities are often used as comedic characters, even if they are the stars of the show. It isn't a shock to hear actresses like say, Beyonce Knowles for Dream Girls lose 20 lbs to play a role.
So, why did I just share with you some of my favorite nature sounds? Well, I came across this study by Alvarsson, Wiens, and Nilsson (2010).
But before that, a quick interview.
Q: Have you ever googled nature sounds to help you relax/fall asleep/keep you from going insane? A: YES!
(Because I'm psychic, I answered your answer to my own question while you were thinking it.)
But why?
According to the findings of Alvarsson et al. (2010),
NATURE SOUNDS RELIEVE STRESS!
[Students rejoice!]
And guess what? Their experimental stressor was a mental math speed test. So legit.
What's interesting about this study is that they were able to measure physiological recovery (perception to physiology). They attached instruments measuring sympathetic and parasympathetic activity to the participant's bodies and studied the effects of playing the different sound types.
Based on their results, they concluded that nature sounds, as opposed to noise, facilitated a faster recovery of the sympathetic system. However, the results were not significant for that of the parasympathetic system.
The researchers suggest that positive emotions arise from hearing these sounds.
I wouldn't want to be the person that gets dumped or dumps someone in a park :-( (Future ex-boyfriend, please take note!)
The core message of our poster is to not only
encourage voters to register for the coming elections, but to also inspire them
to vote for politicians that are honest, competent, nationalistic, educated,
and honorable. Through top-down processing in a socio-political perspective, we
posit that the status quo of the politicians in the country are otherwise, so
we try to encourage voters to register since their vote can lead to changes in
the current political system.
With this in mind, we made use of our previous
knowledge in our Sensation and Perception class to immediately recognize the
affordance of our poster and we do this by trying to capture the voters’
attention. We emphasize certain texts through changing font color and size to
accommodate stimulus salience. We also make it a point that the different
features of the poster are also in rapport with each other so as to help
observers easily integrate them.
Also, our poster can be divided into four layers,
and so we used Gestalt heuristics as well as figure-ground separation
principles to make each one distinct. Each area was established using the law
of common region. A black background separated areas for the top right corner
as well as the bottom portion of the poster. These were filled in with text in
the complementary color (white) as well as a standout color (blue) to make the
text more readable and accessible.
The background is seen as such because it is the
only portion of the poster that is “colorful”. The text written on it lists
down the characteristics of what our group wants to see in a politician. We
tried to make it resemble a checklist which we related to accomplishments.
White thumbprints were superimposed upon each trait instead of a check, in our
hope that whoever sees this poster might associate the check with voting. It
can also be noticed that some of the text in the background is cut-off. This is
where the law of familiarity plays a part, recreating the cut-off portion with
other information from the rest of the poster.
The middle ground of the poster consists of the two
people figures, with the female figure overlapping the male figure, thus adding
some dimension to our poster. These figures were put close together to
illustrate the law of proximity. Once again, the desirable politician traits
were placed around their border, thus establishing a connection between the
person and the trait and presenting these two figures as potential politicians.
For the bottommost banner, we made use of size
perception to highlight the important points of our poster. Not only is
‘BOBOTO’ colored differently (the same color as that of the thumbprint), but it
is also several font sizes larger, thus underscoring the main point of our
poster.
Color perception also plays a role
in capturing attention and differentiating different objects from one another.
It helps in perceptually organizing objects within our poster. In our case, we
made use of trichromatic colors, while opposing responses generated by contrasting
colors are minimized. Also, because of the concept of simultaneous contrast,
colors of the text on a black background tends to stand out more suggesting it
is something we want to emphasize, than the perceived lighter color of the text
on the light background.
References: Goldstein,
E. B. (2010). Perceiving Objects and Scenes. Sensation and perception (8. ed.,
internat. ed., pp. 99-130). Belmont, Calif.:
Thomson Wadsworth.
[Poster design by Kia Anarna, Micah Catalan, Sarah Joy Luzon, & Kei Tanabe]
Panahon nanaman ng pangagampanya at alam niyo na kung bakit: sa susunod na taon sa Mayo, gaganapin muli ang eleksyon! Hinihikayat namin kayo magparehistro bago ang ika-31 ng Oktubre 2012 upang makaboto sa Mayo 2013.
Hindi ba kayo nagtataka kung bakit nagkakaganito ang ating gobyerno? Kuntento na ba kayo sa mga pulitikong nakaupo sa posisyon?
Kung gusto mo ng pulitikong tapat, maaasahan, maka-Pilipino, hindi kurakot, at edukado,
e di magparehistro ka na!
Suportahan mo sila gamit ang iyong boto.
Mahalaga at makapangyarihan ang iyong boto,
kaya gamitin mo ito.
Siguraduhing magparehistro bago ang ika-31 ng Oktubre
Have you been in a rock or musical concert with a friend who
is crazy with music proved by his amazing talent in playing an instrument? Or
just having time doing something else while a music was being played and
suddenly, he noticed something wrong or something exceedingly excellent about
the music and will tell you how good the guitar riff at the end and it would be
better if it is key of A than key of E? You will be amazed and will suddenly
ask yourself, how did he do that? Why can he observe it while you are just
simply enjoying the music regardless of its elements?
Well, what
you exclusively experienced is the so-called change deafness or inability to
detect change in sound stimuli present in the environment. In a study conducted
by Agres and Krumhansl (2008), change blindness between professional musicians
and non-musicians was scientifically investigated. There were 15 undergraduate
students who were the non musician group and 11 professional musician which
formed the musician group participated in the study. It was a two-part
experiment in which in the first part, the effects of musical structure and
musical expertise were explored on the ability to detect changes of a tone
within a melody using stylistic, non stylistic and random melodies. In the
second part, full-factorial design was utilized to examine change blindness as
directed by tonality, musical interval, metrical position, note duration, and musical
expertise. From the variables being examined, tonality really contributed to
the significant change in the performance of both groups. It was also
generalized that there are a lot of interacting parameters that contributed to
detection of musical change, however, listeners do not get into the detailed
information of the music structure but only to the gist of the salient property
of music of which tonality is part of that gist. Tonality is generally the key in which a music is played or the
relations between the notes of a scale or key. There were significant changes
(tonality, etc.) on how Professional Musician group detect more sensitively
changes in the music than the Non musician group for stylistic music but for
non stylistic or random melody, both groups could not reliably encode features
of the music. One reason could be that tonal and metrical structure present in
stylistic melody gives the listeners a template on which to build their gist.
Just like in visual perception, changes in stimuli were difficult to be
detected when it has no schematic representation and not presented consistently
which is true for non stylistic melody or random melody for they are not
encoded in the working memory. This suggests that the reason relatively large
changes in the melodies that are not detected is because some tones are not
retained in working memory.
Well, as
for me who is somehow exposed to music, it just gave the approval that I can
sense changes in a song whether it was played or sang in flat or sharp but I
have nothing to say when it is just a random tone. Thus, the next time you will
go to a musical concert with a friend whose a musician expect that He’s really
greater than you in noticing changes but when both of you are placed in a space
in the middle of the city where melodies from different medium such as beeping
car, shouts of people, he is not at par with you.
If you don’t, then perhaps I’m really getting old. It’s
actually a children’s show I really liked to watch way way way back to the good
old days when I had so much free time and all I was worrying about was what show
to watch. Unlike now that I can barely watch TV because of all the things I
need to do (e.g. write a blog), but I still don’t feel pretty bad especially
when one of my friends doesn’t even know who Kuya Kim is (ehem, Micah :)).
Anyway, Batibot is
like Sesame Street which uses mascots and puppets as characters to create
stories for children. I can still remember how fascinated and curious I was on
how these characters could speak like humans. It was only when I was a
little older when I realized that they were not really speaking on their own,
but they were actually being dubbed and/or manipulated and I just tend to
perceive them as the one directly speaking.
Anyway, here's a Jessica Soho's (2007) feature of Batibot: (sorry, I can't find a better resolution)
Apparently, this is what we call a visual capture or
ventriloquism effect wherein we perceive sounds to be coming from the apparent
visual source, even if it actually originates from another location (Goldstein,
2010). This is what commonly occurs on acts of stagecraft, in which a person
changes his/her voice to make a puppet seem alive.
I actually found a very interesting study by Baldwin (2012),
on how ventriloquist dolls are being used nowadays to interact with people with
dementia. In his experiment, he exposed the patients into three treatments:
interacting with staff members (control group), listening to music, and
engaging with the doll. They scored the patients with their level
of interaction and interest on the three conditions by putting observers on
each conducted session.
The experiment showed a 28 percent increase in the level of
engagement when the doll was used compared to the other types of interaction. This
shows how the ventriloquist doll helped residents, especially those withdrawn
or depressed, open up their feelings. They also observed how those who
rarely communicated with their family or care staff, suddenly preferred
engaging with the doll than with people.
Ventriloquist doll used for dementia therapy
This led them to conclude on how patients considered the
doll as a surrogate, non-threatening, and light-hearted entity that made
communication with it easier and freer. Another reason is how engaging with the
ventriloquist doll also possessed what Cooren (2012) calls as “one of the key
elements of communication, that is, our capacity to make other beings say or do
things while we speak, write, or, more generally, conduct ourselves”.
The use of dolls in treating patients with dementia has
actually been started by Mackenzie et al (2006). In their experiment, dolls
were put on visible areas (e.g. tables) where patients can easily locate and
engage with them. They observed a largely positive effect on the patients, and
they saw how the residents became “less agitated, more engaged and more likely
to communicate with staff”.
This is really interesting for me, since the ventriloquist
dolls and puppets that I thought as just part of my childhood, are now actually
being used as a therapy for dementia. Also, this again highlights how our
senses do not work in isolation, but how different modalities work together, like
our audio-visual-tactile senses as in the case of doll ventriloquism. It is
amazing how memory can falter, like in the case of patients with dementia, but our ability to
sense and perceive stimulus simultaneously is still automatic, and how it can still affect one’s level of interaction and disclosure.
Though there are criticisms that these ventriloquist dolls
face infantilisation or the danger of treating old age as that of a
second childhood (Mackenzie et al., 2012), I just think that recognizing it as
a potential form of therapy still has large implications and pioneering
approaches on dealing with people with neurodegenerative disease.
There are still more researches to be done on this field but
as for me, I guess I need to buy a Pong
Pagong stuff toy and practice ventriloquism in the near future.
Well, if you really don’t know who Pong Pagong is, then here is just a video of one of my most
favorite ventriloquists, Paul Zerdin:
Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception 8th ed.
Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Mackenzie, L., James, I., Morse, R., Mukaetova-Ladinska, E.,
Reichelt, K. (2006). A pilot study on the use of dolls for people with
dementia. Age and Ageing, 35(4)
441-44.
Kia: [Real-life Thumbelina?] Chos lang XD Bakit ang laki ng picture ko ang daya!!! Hahaha
Is there really such a thing as a real-life Thumbelina? Or a minimized person that can fit into one's palm? Sorry to pop your bubble but they don't really exist. Reality isn't as magical as fairytales but thankfully, we can somehow escape from this objectivity through visual illusions.
Visual illusions or more commonly known as optical illusions are a phenomena by which our visual system fabricates a three-dimensional interpretation of the world (Eagleman, 2001) based from the two-dimensional representation in our retina. Basically, it just means that our perception of the world does not tally with the actual size or depth or distance of these actual objects due to these illusions . We are also often fascinated by them since through visual illusions, we are effortlessly and easily challenged whether what we see is real (Bach & Poloschek, 2006).
Like in the picture above, we didn't actually find a pixie in school or invent a shrinking device, or even use CGI to create this effect (we can barely even use Photoshop). That's actually Sarj, one of the bloggers who went a couple of strides behind Kia and strategically posed to create this special effect.
See? You can even see her shadow on the floor.
The perceived change in size of Sarj is due to her more distant position. Since she is farther from the observer's eye, she subtends a smaller visual angle than Kia, thus making her appear smaller. Well, visual angle is just the angle of an object relative to the observer's eye (Goldstein, 2010) or how the angle of the object of interest subtends at the eye.
Moreover, visual angle is influenced by the size of the stimulus and the distance of the object from the observer. The farther the object from the observer, the larger the visual angle it subtends, whereas when it is nearer, the visual angle is small.
Thumbelina: take 2
vs.
Thumbelina: take 3
Actually this trick has also been used by filmmakers such as Peter Jackson in the Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to accomplish interactions between normal sized humans and in the case of the LOTR, hobbits without the use of CGI. You can see how this was done (and other interesting non-CGI effects) in this article in Cracked.
It basically uses the concept of forced perspective, wherein optical illusions are used to make an object appear different in distance and/or size than the actual reality (Bell, 2011).
Frodo and Gandalf are perceived to be sitting side-by-side
Frodo is actually sitting several feet away from Gandalf to make Frodo look smaller
Try it at home!
Close one eye and form the forefinger and thumb of the hand opposite the closed eye into a letter C (or a backward letter C). Try fitting a distant object between that space and then when you're sure, approach the object without moving your fingers and see which is bigger!
Who is taller?
Who do you think is taller of the two ladies standing there? The one on the left or the one on the right (imagine they're wearing the same shoes)?
Actually, they are both the same height! You've been deceived by what we call the MΓΌller-Lyer Illusion. This happens when our visual system judges fins or angles that are "protruding out" to be longer, but those that are "protruding in" to be shorter (Goldstein, 2010).
Muller-Lyer Illusion: Can you tell at first glance which one of the vertical lines is longer?
It is also interesting to note that perception of Muller-Lyer illusion is influenced by culture (Masuda, 2009). Westerners or individuals who grew up in a "carpented" world, perceive lines with protruding fins as longer, since they have been regularly exposed to corners of rectilinear objects. One the other hand, some cultures (e.g. hunters-gatherers) are said to be immune to the Muller-Lyer illusion, suggesting that perception is influenced by environment and previous knowledge.
Real-life application!
Are you the shortest among your friends? Fret not! The next time you take a group picture, put your hands up into a Y. You'll look like you're having the time of your life and you'll probably gain a few centimeters in height*. To make it even more effective, ask your friends to help you out by keeping their arms in an invered V position.
*Results are not guaranteed!
A thumb for a head
Is her head really smaller than a thumb? Or about as big as a thumbnail? I think you already know the answer to this. [Hint: Thumbelina] But, you might be wondering, why?
Let us take into account again the concept of visual angles. The hand is nearer to the observer, thus having a greater visual angle. It then makes it look bigger than the face.
Hand x 4
Which one of these hands is first in line to have a meaningful conversation with you?
We assume you could probably guess it's the one on the left most part. How did you know that though? What if those hands were actually connected to one another and were actually only just one big hand?
The thing is, our brains are capable of perceiving depth and distance according to a number of factors.
What you've done in this case is actually judge a distance according to shadows, relative size and deletion. Your brain probably registered the shadows which were cast along the hands and judged that those were cast by the hands which are in front of them.
Parting words and a disclaimer in between
Being able to perceive visual illusion is a gift.. You might have taken it for granted before, but people with autism are not really susceptible to these illusions (Mitchell & Ropar, 2005). I guess you can be thankful to your properly processing visual system, but visual illusion perception does not come from this alone. Your previous experiences, environment, and knowledge play a role in enabling you to perceive these. Visual illusions actually look convincing only if you want them to (Ganel, Tanzer, & Goodale, 2008). So really, you can believe there exists a Thumbelina in this world. :)
A crash course on Photoshop, this was not.
What do you do when you're asked to take pictures demonstrating depth and size?
Whip out your cellphones and take pictures, silly!
Ganel, T., Tanzer, M., & Goodale, M. (2008) A Double Dissociation Between Action and Perception in the Context of Visual Illusions: Opposite Effects of Real and Illusory Size.Psychological Science, 19(3) , 221–225. Retrieved from Ebsco database.
Goldstein, E. (2010). Sensation and Perception 8th ed. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Meticulous- adj. showing great attention to detail; very careful and precise.
In my first year in college, excitement is the thing that I feel when I left home in the province and rent a space in an apartment. I feel the bliss brought by independence and having thoughts of going on an adventure with new buddies and friendly freshie roommates. That time, I am still used to have someone who will fix my own cabinet or fix my own bed, to have someone that would arrange personal stuffs that I use which makes me really disorganized. Thus, to have new meticulous rummie is somehow troublesome but actually, it's really challenging. My new roommate would always tell me everyday about arranging the room and cleaning it, of small bubbles and the few strand of hairs that were left from the bathroom after I take a bath especially when Im already late in class, of where should I hang my towel. It was annoying and somehow I feel being bullied because she's five years older than me. Such annoyance could be because at home, I was not used to be told my mom how to clean my room with so much organization because it was my father who takes this role. He's the one who often reviews our cleaning work, he easily see anything that is not good for His meticulous eyes but is already okay for me. Apparently, I was not used to have a female authority to tell me my cleaning ways. But looking between the contrast between I, my roommate and my father, do women and women are really different in terms of looking into details?
A study conducted by Cognitive psychologist Dr Lorenza Colzato of Leiden University with her colleagues Toronto showed that women's attention are significantly different than men's as an effect of high levels of the hormone estrogen among women during their menstrual cycle (2011). Women were keen into details and highly meticulous when estrogen is at work. In their research, men and women carry out an inhibition task of which their participants view a short film and immediately after it appears a stimulus on the edge of their field of vision, every time in a different spot it is being presented and they have to react as quickly as possible to that. The reaction time normally increases as the interval between the film and the stimulus lengthens. This is due to the fact that the visual attention system gives priority to new locations over old ones, and the return of attention to the old location is inhibited. The men performed the task with the same time intervals however, the women did it during the three different phases of their menstrual cycle. The results showed that during the luteal phase which is after ovulation and in the menstrual phase, the women performed the same way as men but highly differed during the follicular phase, the first half of menstrual cycle which is characterized by a higher level of estrogen.
This is the reason why women are really meticulous to the point that we label them as having Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. They don't just the thing but the details of the thing that's why it is a no surprise for women to really notice a single hair on the floor of a well-arranged and cleaned room. It is no surprise that some of the mothers see any unpleasant crease in our dress when we go out most especially when the estrogen are up. Everything is magnified and there's no such thing as negligible for women during their follicular phase.
Thus, maybe those times that I was consistently told by my roommate about every single detail to fix in the room is the time right after her period. Well, for my father, maybe He's just meticulous.
Source:
I'm not Obsessive-Compulsive I'm super meticulous. [Online Image]. Retrieved August 28, 2012 from http://www.superiorsilkscreen.com/t-shirts/327-i-m-not-obsessive-compulsive-i-m-super-meticulous.html
Leiden University (2011). Is attention in females different?. ScienceDaily. Retrieved August 28, 2012, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111214094659.htm
