1. What is the World Like for Other People? Perception and Reality Things Are Not Always As They Seem...

2. What is the World Like for Other People? Overview Vantage Point Line of Sight and Refraction Experiments Color Blindness Tests Rose-colored Glasses Thought Experiment Real-world Experiments Blindsight and Neglect Patients Homework Essay: Thought Experiments

3. Vantage Point This is probably very obvious but it is a very important limit upon our ability to perceive reality correctly: Where you are relative to something else makes a difference. For example, if you are looking down on a soft drink can it looks different than if we view it from the side.

4. Line of Sight We can only see things that are not obstructed by something else. We can determine if something is obstructed by drawing a straight line from our eyes to the object. Whatever we can draw a straight line to without it hitting anything else is in our line of sight This means that two people can have different perceptions of reality depending upon where they are seeing it from.

5. Refraction Fill out the handout as you conduct the refraction experiment. Light Refraction Experiment (1) Make experimental observations (e.g. drawings) of light refraction of a pencil in water from different angles. (2) Think about additional methods of testing whether pencil is really bent.

6. Refraction Discussion Did the pencil look the same or different when looking at it from different angles? Which of these angles is correct (the way the pencil is really shaped)? How can we test to see if the water really bends the pencil or if we are mistaken?

7. Dot Numbers: Do You See Any Numbers?

8. Dot Figures: Are any of these objects in the bigger picture? Which one(s)?

9. Perceptual Range Normal humans can only see light that is in the visible light spectrum This is very similar to only being able to hear sounds in the audible frequency range (20 to 20,000Hz); some animals (like dogs) can hear high pitched sounds that we cannot Some people have a disorder of their eyes called red-green color blindness so that red and green look the same to them. Their perceptual range is smaller than other people.

10. Rose-colored Glasses What would it be like if we always had rose (red) colored glasses on? What would Red look like to us? How about Blue? Think about it… Now pick up the transparency in front of you and look at different colored objects through it. Can you still tell a difference between the colors (red and blue, for example)? How about the difference between red and grey?

11. Color Chart

12. Patients with Brain Injury What is the difference between the pictures on the left and the copies of them made on the right?

13. More Drawings by Spatial Neglect Patients What is the difference between the drawings on the left and the copies of them made on the right?

14. Patient Asked to Cross Out All Lines What is the pattern of lines being crossed out?

15. Neglect Discussion How would you describe what is happening to these patients with brain injuries? It is not that they can’t see things on the left at all: If their eyes did not work all they would have to do is move the paper to the right and look at the side they could not see. These patients are unaware that these pictures or objects have left sides (even though they have all seen these objects (clocks or flowers) normally before their accidents).

16. Consciousness Conscious – The things that you are actively aware of in your mind (it is not the same thing as your conscience; which is your moral sense) Subconscious – The things that are going on in your mind that you are not actively aware of (may or may not become aware of them later) Unconscious – When you are in a condition when you are not aware of anything going on in the world or your mind

17. Conclusions Is everything that is going on in a person’s mind conscious or are some things subconscious? Is your perception of the world the same as everyone else’s even when observing the same thing or situation? Elaborate. Does information coming to your sense organs (like your eyes) mean that the information becomes conscious to you? What evidence do you have to support these conclusions?

18. Mysterious Case of Blindsight A person has an injury to the parts of the brain that processes most (but not all) of the visual information from the eyes (but his eyes are fine). When asked whether he can see anything, the person reports they are totally blind (cannot see anything). When the person is told to guess what they were shown he/she does much better than pure chance. How is this similar to Neglect patients? Essay HW question: What do these patients (Blindsight and Neglect) tell us about the role the brain plays in perception?