1. Perceptual Interpretation Module 14
Online link
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2. Perception Overview Perceptual Interpretation
Sensory Deprivation and Restored Vision
Perceptual Adaptation
Perceptual Set
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3. Perceptual Interpretation
To what extent to we learn to perceive?
Immanuel Kant ( ) maintained that knowledge comes from our inborn ways of organizing sensory experiences.
John Locke ( ) argued that we learn to perceive the world through our experiences.
How important is experience in shaping our perceptual interpretation?
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4. Sensory Deprivation & Restored Vision
After cataract surgery, adults blind from birth were able to regain sight. These individuals could differentiate figure and ground relationships & color, but unable to recognize by sight things familiar by touch (Von Senden, 1932).
Preview Question 18: What does research on sensory restriction and restored vision reveal about the effects of experience on perception?
Suggests figure ground relationships & color are innate.
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5. Facial Recognition
After blind adults regained sight, they were able to recognize distinct features, but were unable to recognize faces.
Normal observers also show difficulty in facial recognition when the lower half of the pictures are changed.
We perceive the same tops differently with different bottoms
People deprived of visual experience from birth are more able to recognize the halves as the same…because they have difficulty with whole faces.
Example of 43 yo who gained sight at 40…lacked perceptual constancy…people walking away appeared to be shrinking. (Bower 2003)
Courtesy of Richard LeGrand
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6. GW, mona lisa, George bush
                          
                                                  
Who are these guys…
GW, mona lisa, George bush
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7. Face schemas are accentuated by specific features on the face.
Features on a Face
Face schemas are accentuated by specific features on the face.
Students recognized a caricature of Arnold Schwarzenegger faster than his actual photo.
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8. Eyes and mouth play a dominant role in face recognition.
Eye & Mouth
Eyes and mouth play a dominant role in face recognition.
Portrait artists understood the importance of this recognition and therefore centered an eye in their paintings.
Courtesy of Christopher Tyler
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9. Gore or Clinton?
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10. Mona Lisa
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11. Mona Lisa
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12. Madonna
Figure Face schemas Myers: Psychology, Eighth Edition Copyright © 2007 by Worth Publishers
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13. All have the same face
So what's wrong? Well, for one thing, the members of this track team all have the same face. Unless we are paying close attention to facial features, hair plays a big part in forming an image of individuals.
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14. Sensory Deprivation
Experiments with cats and monkeys
Without proper stimulation cortical cells do not develop normal connections
This suggests a critical period for visual learning
Deprive older people who already have vision, no problem
Deprive infants…problems
Nurture sculpts what nature has endowed.
Kittens raised without exposure to horizontal lines later had difficulty perceiving horizontal bars.
Blakemore & Cooper (1970)
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15. Perceptual Adaptation
Preview Question 19: How adaptable is our ability to perceive the world around us?
Inversion goggles first used in 1896, the subject was able to adapt in 8 days.
Chicks unable to adapt (Hess 1956)
Vid clip?
Visual ability to adjust to an artificially displaced visual field, e.g., prism glasses.
Courtesy of Hubert Dolezal
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16. Perceptual Set
A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
What you see in the center picture is influenced by flanking pictures.
Preview Question 20: How do our assumptions, expectations, and contexts affect our perceptions? Right half the class should close their eyes and the left half of the class should see the saxophonist for about 20 seconds. Then the left half of the class should close the eyes and the right half should see the woman’s face. All of them should then write their responses while watching the middle picture. Responses are compared to show perceptual set.
Animation starts on clicks
From Shepard, 1990.
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17. Perceptual Set Other examples of perceptual set.
Our existing schema influence our perceptual set
Frank Searle, photo Adams/ Corbis-Sygma
Dick Ruhl
(a) Loch ness monster or a tree trunk; (b) Flying saucers or clouds?
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18. Schemas
Schemas are concepts that organize and interpret unfamiliar information.
What we perceive not only comes from the environment but also from our minds.
Schemas or concepts develop through experience.
Children's schemas represent reality as well as their abilities to represent what they see.
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19. Context Effects Context can radically alter perception.
Eel I son the wagon. Eel is on the orange.
Our brains have the ability to work backward (Richard Warren)
A later stimulus can determine how we perceive an earlier one.
Sad music can affect perception (Halberstadt 1995)
Mourning morning
Die Dye
Pain Payne
Gloomy music listening to teens
Emotional contexts, spouses who feel loved less stressed by marital events (Murray 2003)
Drivers hate pedestrians, pedestrians hate drivers (Jaffe 2004)
Is the “magician cabinet” on the floor or hanging from the ceiling?
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20. Context instilled by culture also alters perception.
Cultural Context
Context instilled by culture also alters perception.
To an East African, the woman sitting is balancing a metal box on her head, while the family is sitting under a tree.
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21. Some perceptual sets are learned from our cultures.
People from noncarpentered cultures, cultures that do not use right angles and corners often in their buildings and architecture are less likely to be fooled by this illusion
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22. Our brains are miswired
14:36
Al Seckel, a cognitive neuroscientist, explores the perceptual illusions that fool our brains. Loads of eye tricks help him prove that not only are we easily fooled, we kind of like it.
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23. Is perception innate or acquired? Both!
Perception Revisited
Is perception innate or acquired? Both!
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24. Is There Extrasensory Perception?
Perception without sensory input is called extrasensory perception (ESP).
96% of scientists do not believe in ESP.
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25. Claims of ESP
Telepathy: Mind-to-mind communication. One person sending thoughts and the other receiving them.
Clairvoyance: Perception of remote events, such as sensing a friend’s house on fire.
Precognition: Perceiving future events, such as a political leader’s death.
Psychokenesis: Moving things with the mind
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26. Premonitions or Pretensions?
Can psychics see the future?
Can psychics aid police in identifying locations of dead bodies?
What about psychic predictions of the famous Nostradamus?
The answers to these questions is NO!
Nostradamus’ predictions are “retrofitted” to events that took place after his predictions.
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27. Putting ESP to Experimental Test
In an experiment with 28,000 individuals, Wiseman attempted to prove whether or not one can psychically influence or predict a coin toss. People were able to correctly influence or predict a coin toss 49.8% of the time.
Experiment done in Britain
Random number generator, 4 chances to call heads/tails
110,972 tosses
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33. Perception & the Human Factor
Human Factor Psychologists design machines that assist our natural perceptions. Their greatest tool is research.
Preview Question 3: How do human factors psychologists help create user-friendly technology?
Photodisc/ Punchstock
Courtesy of General Electric
The knobs for the stove burners on the right are easier to understand than those on the left.
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34. Human Factors & Misperceptions
Understanding human factors enables us to design equipment to prevent disasters.
Two-thirds of airline crashes caused by human error are largely due to errors of perception.
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35. Human Factors in Space
To combat conditions of monotony, stress, and weightlessness when traveling to Mars, NASA engages Human Factor Psychologists.
Transit Habituation (Transhab), NASA
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36. Autostereogram
This image should be viewed by crossing the eyes until the two target circles at the top are seen as three. What you will see is a checkerboard pattern.
Why here?
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37. Stroop Effect
Perceptual interference
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38. ABC123
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40. In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter). It's all very physiological too, because it visualizes the concept that good can't exist without evil (or the absence of good is evil ).
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42. You may not see it at first, but the white spaces read the word optical, the blue landscape reads the word illusion. Look again!
Can you see why this painting is called an optical illusion?
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43. The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.
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44. You probably read the word ME in brown, but when you look through ME you will see YOU!  
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47. The temporal presentation enhances the well-known afterimage in complementary color.
Jeremy Hinton, the ‘inventor’, writes: “The illusion illustrates Troxler fading, complementary colors, negative after-effects, and is capable of showing colors outside the display gamut.”
I have been repeatedly asked to explain this in more detail, so here goes:
There is something called the “negative retinal afterimage”. It becomes visible when one given hue stays on the same retinal position for several seconds (usually we would move our eyes typically 3 times per second, so this is no disadvantage in normal viewing). The afterimage builds up as that retinal location adapts to this special hue, and when looking at a neutral background the complementary color is seen.
This is a good thing, normally, because it helps “color constancy”, that is we see colors somewhat independent of the ambient illumination (compare the bluish glacier noon sun with a reddish tint in the evening living room by the fireside).
Ok, so the afterimage is “burnt in”, meaning: that retinal location is adapted. Now the magenta patch is suddenly switched to gray. Because of the adaptation, the complementary color is now seen, which would be green for magenta, or light gray for a dark gray.
The retinal afterimage typically fades away rapidly (over a few seconds under normal conditions). But here this fade-out does not reduce the perception of the afterimage, because a new one is uncovered right after at the next location.
In addition, a Gestalt effect, here the “phi phenomenon” comes into play: the afterimage from the successive retinal locations is integrated and perceived as one single moving object, namely the green disk.
In summary, the following factors make this illusion rather compelling:
it is rather easy to steadily fixate on the centre
most of the time the retinal locations are re-adapted and the afterimage is uncovered only briefly
a Gestalt effect leads to the perception of a flying green disk.
Source
Jeremy L Hinton ( , personal communication, jeremy dot hinton at bigfoot dot com)
Robert O’Shea started a pertinent Wikipedia entry
If your eyes follow the movement of the rotating pink dot, you will only see one color, pink. If you stare at the black + in the center, the moving dot turns to green. Now, concentrate on the black + in the center of the picture. After a short period of time, all the pink dots will slowly disappear, and you will only see a green dot rotating if you're lucky! It's amazing how our brain works. There really is no green dot, and the pink ones really don‘t disappear. This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see. Vanishing dots
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48. Bent Lines
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49. More Straight Lines
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50. Circle & Straight Lines
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51. Bricks
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52. Cafe Wall
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53. Clashing
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54. Gray Diamonds
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55. Horizontal Circles
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56. Moving Arrows
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57. Shamrocks
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58. Sausages
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59. Moving Image
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61. Blue Rotational
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62. Candycane
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63. Moving or Shimmering
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64. Blue-
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65. Circle Spiral
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66. Circle Spiral The figure, which is known as the Fraser
Spiral, is provided by Stanley Coren and his colleagues
as another example of the distinction between sensation
and perception. Although the figure appears to form a
spiral, it is actually a set of concentric circles. Instruct
students to place one figure on any line composing the
spiral. Then have them place a finger from the other
hand beside it and begin tracing the circle while holding
their first finger in place. Eventually they will return to
the first finger confirming the figure to be a circle.
Bloomquist, D. W. (1985). Teaching sensation and perception:
Its ambiguous and subliminal aspects. In A. M.
Rogers and C. J. Sheirer (Eds.), The G. Stanley Hall lecture
series: Volume 5 (pp. 157–203). Washington, DC:
American Psychological Association.
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68. Dot Fades Away
Finally, have them stare at the fuzzy-contoured disc on the right in (c). If they keep their eyes very still for about 30 seconds, the disc will disappear. They will find that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to do this with the sharp-contoured disc on the left side of the figure. The explanation for this difference? The image of the fuzzy disc jiggling on the retina causes only slight changes in the amount of light stimulating the receptors near the contour. If the eyes are kept still enough, the small change in stimulation caused by movement of this fuzzy contour is not enough to maintain perception and the disc fades from view. When looking at the sharp disc, the slight jiggling of the eyes causes the sharp contour to fall first on some receptors and then on others. Thus, the amount of light stimulating the receptors is constantly changing and the disc remains visible. Bolt
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69. Man’s Hat
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70. Ambiguous Cube
Necker cube
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71. Which Way Blocks?
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72. Invisible Triangle
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73. Can you build this?
Video: Discovering Psychology, Updated Edition: Sensation and Perception (Annenberg/CPB Project, 30 minutes)
This program provides an excellent complement to text coverage. After identifying the important structures involved in visual sensation, the program describes how visual information is processed. Nobelist David Hubel, whose work with Torsten Wiesel on feature detectors is described in the text, is interviewed. The program portrays perception as involving an active construction of reality. It reviews the basic principles of perceptual organization and interpretation, paying special attention to the role of expectancy and context effects. A staged bank robbery makes viewers aware of both the complexity of the perceptual process and of human susceptibility to error. The program includes vivid demonstrations of several phenomena described in Modules 13 and 14, including the Ames room, impossible figures, ambiguous figures (saxophonist vs. woman’s face), and perceptual adaptation to disorienting glasses.
Bill Nye illusions
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74. Crazy Block Shape
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75. Funky Shape
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76. Impossible Figure
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77. Impossible Figure
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78. Impossible Figure
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79. Impossible Figure
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81. Nutty Nut
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83. Space Clock
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84. Impossible Figure
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86. Ladder up or down?
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90. Perspective Man
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91. Which inner circle is bigger?
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92. Ouch Illusion
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98. Perfect Squares
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99. Hermann Grid
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100. Shades of Gray
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101. How many colors do you see?
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102. Candy Stripes
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103. Shades of Green
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104. Shades of Red
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105. Shelves
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106. Shimmer
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107. Square Spiral
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108. Straight or Wavy Lines?
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109. Wavy Lines
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110. Wavy Lines
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111. Wavy Lines
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112. Zollner Effect
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113. Are these lines parallel?
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114. Poggendorf Illusion
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115. Are these lines straight?
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116. Are these straight lines?
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117. Rectangles or Diamonds?
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118. Strange Cylinder
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119. Black Blocks?
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120. Is this the Letter E?
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121. Continuous Staircase
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122. Do these stairs go up or down?
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123. Jesus
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124. She Looks At You
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125. Which Way Window?
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127. Donkey or Seal?
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128. Duck or Rabbit?
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129. Duck or Rabbit
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130. Face or Dragon?
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131. Young Lady or Old Lady?
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132. Young Woman or Old Lady?
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133. Old Man, Old Lady, Young Lady
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134. Mirror or Devil Face?
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135. Angelbats
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136. Boatman
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137. Liar
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138. How Many Faces?
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139. Skull or Table?
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140. What do you see here?
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142. What do you see?
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143. Do you see an old man, or two people kissing?
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151. Animiated necker cube

153. EXPLORING PSYCHOLOGY (7th Edition in Modules) David Myers
PowerPoint Slides
Aneeq Ahmad
Henderson State University
Worth Publishers, © 2008
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