February 2011 Archives

What does this tell us about the heuristics the visual system relies on to perceive depth?

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows - only hard and with luminous edges - and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen. Alas, a few years ago, I should have said "my universe": but now my mind has been opened to higher views of things.

Read more from the book here....

http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~banchoff/Flatland/

You can control how this spins at this site:

http://www1.appstate.edu/~kms/classes/psy3203/Movement/depth.htm

What does this tell you about the perception of depth?

What does this tell us about the expectations our visual has of the world?

What does this say about size constancy?

This is a good video that one of our student colleagues posted.

There are some really good videos on this page too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B47Js1MtT4w

Color vision defects cause problems in the real world. This powerpoint series denmostrates how the world appears to a person with a severe type of color blindness...

http://www.neitzvision.com/content/colorblindworld.html

Seeing in Color

Color, What? What Color?

How do these videos relate to what you have been learning about color vision?

What does this demonstration tell us about sensation & perception?

Can you see both the frog and horse at the same time?

Is this evidence of a bi-stable illusion?

(thanks to Gerri for sending)

Did the title make it harder (or take longer) to see what is in the tree?

In what way does this image relate to sensation & perception?

(thanks to Gerri for sending)

"****FINAL CALL FOR ILLUSION SUBMISSIONS: THE WORLD'S 7TH ANNUAL BEST ILLUSION OF THE YEAR CONTEST****

http://illusioncontest.neuralcorrelate.com

The 2011 Best Illusion of the Year Contest will be held in Naples, Florida (Naples Philharmonic Center for the Arts, http://www.thephil.org/) on Monday, May 9th, 2011, as an official satellite of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) conference. The Naples Philharmonic Center is an 8-minute walk from the main VSS headquarters hotel in Naples, and is thus central to the VSS conference.

Past contests have been highly successful in drawing public attention to vision research, with over ***FIVE MILLION*** website hits from viewers all over the world, as well as hundreds of international media stories. The First, Second and Third Prize winners at the 20019 contest were Koukichi Sugihara (Meiji Institute for Advanced Study of Mathematical Sciences, Japan), Bart Anderson (University of Sydney, Australia), and Jan Kremlacek (Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic)."

Which illusions do you think best help us inderstand the visual system?

Why do you think scientists woudl put on a contest for illusions?

Check out the parent site as well at (http://neuralcorrelate.com/) they are up to some cool stuff.

What would you do if you were a student in this lab?

"What does an average French woman look like? Here's your answer and a whole lot more, where thousands of faces have been averaged into a composite face for each of 41 different countries.

Face Research created the software, asking its user to define a dozen points on a face, and then it's possible to determine an average face when comparing two photos or thousands."

http://mashable.com/2011/02/10/average-faces/?utm_source=iphoneapp&utm_medium=rss&utm_content=textlink&utm_campaign=iphoneapp#9883Face-Research-Group-3

(Thanks to Andy for sending)

This person is either David Hubel or Torsten Wiesel and has an anesthetized cat with it's eyes pointed toward this screen. An electrode is placed in the occipital cortex in the first part of the neocortex that receives visual information from the eyes via the thalamus. This electrode picks up the electrical signal of an action potential, which signifies the information that a particular neuron in this area is passing on to other neurons.

Here are more cool videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPQAtkxn3tY&feature=related

Please read chapter 8. After reading chapter 8, please respond to the following questions:

What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.

Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)

Let me know if you have any questions,

--Dr. M

What I would like you to do is to find a topic from chapter 8 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources.

Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites.

By now you all should be skilled at synthesizing the topical material you have obtained from the various web sites you visited. If you need a refresher please let me know.

Thanks,

Please read chapter 7. After reading chapter 7, please respond to the following questions:

What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.

Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)

Let me know if you have any questions,

--Dr. M

What I would like you to do is to find a topic from chapter 7 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources.

Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites.

By now you all should be skilled at synthesizing the topical material you have obtained from the various web sites you visited. If you need a refresher please let me know.

Thanks,

Please read chapter 6. After reading chapter 6, please respond to the following questions:

What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.

Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)

Let me know if you have any questions,

--Dr. M

What I would like you to do is to find a topic from chapter 6 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources.

Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites.

By now you all should be skilled at synthesizing the topical material you have obtained from the various web sites you visited. If you need a refresher please let me know.

Thanks,

Please read chapter 5. After reading chapter 5, please respond to the following questions:

What were two things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? Which two things did you find the least interesting? Why? What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology? Finally indicate two topics or concepts that you would like me to cover in more depth in class.

Include a list of the terms and concepts you used in your post. (example - Terms: positive reinforcer, extinction, reinforcer, discriminative stimulus...)

Let me know if you have any questions,

--Dr. M

What I would like you to do is to find a topic from chapter 5 that you were interested in and search the internet for material on that topic. You might, for example, find people who are doing research on the topic, you might find web pages that discuss the topic, you might find youtube clips that demonstrate something related to the topic, etc. What you find and use is pretty much up to you at this point. But use at least 3 sources.

Once you have completed your search and explorations, I would like you to say what your topic is, how exactly it fits into the chapter, and why you are interested in it. Next, I would like you to take the information you found related to your topic, integrate/synthesize it, and then write about it. At the end, please include working URLs for the three websites.

By now you all should be skilled at synthesizing the topical material you have obtained from the various web sites you visited. If you need a refresher please let me know.

Thanks,

--Dr. M 

Are you curious about what is happening in Egypt?

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

What kind of percpetual experieces would an individual have in a crowd this size?
How would expectations of what is going on influence a person's perception?