StemCell Therapy

If your eyesight is reasonable, can you see whats right in front of you?

What an odd question, you may think. But psychologists have discovered that although at some level we register what we look at, were not consciously aware of a lot of it.

American psychologists Arien Mack and Irvin Rock coined the term inattentional blindness in 1998 when they found 25-50 per cent of participants asked to look at visual displays failed to notice particular shapes if not asked to look for them specifically. This attracted the interest of psychologist Daniel Simons.

Simons and Christopher Chabris, then at Harvard, asked 192 undergraduates to watch a video clip of students dressed in black or white T-shirts passing a basketball to one another. Each participant was tasked with counting the number of passes made by players wearing either black or white. About two-thirds into the 75-second clip, an unexpected event took place: either a woman holding an opened umbrella or dressed in a gorilla suit strolled through the players. When asked afterwards, 46 per cent of the participants said they hadnt noticed anything unusual.

Next, Simons and Daniel Levin at Kent State asked someone to approach pedestrians on a college campus and ask for directions. After about 15 seconds, two other people carrying a large door walked between them. During that brief moment, the person asking for directions changed places with one of the two people carrying the door, so, when the pedestrian could once again see the person he was helping, that person had become someone different. Yet when questioned later, seven of the 15 again, nearly half the pedestrians failed to notice the switch.

Next, Ronald Resnick at the University of British Columbia asked observers to view a sequence of displays that alternated between an image of a scene say a market place and the same scene with one easily visible detail changed. A number of studies followed using this flicker paradigm and, time and time again, only about half the participants reported any difference although, when told where to direct their attention, most spotted the changes immediately. Using computer generated geometric patterns, Simons recently gave participants varying amounts of time to notice an unexpected object passing through patterns on their screens. Yet even when given more time, around half the participants still failed to see what was right before them.

These studies suggest that, unless we think about it, well see only what were looking for or are asked to look for, thereby merely reinforcing what we already know and expect.

This year, why not open yourself to new possibilities and keep your outlook fresh? Its easy to do and neednt take long.

Once a day for two minutes, stop your purposeful doing and become curious. Pick up an object you think you know well and study it, fully, without expectations or judgment. Youll be pleasantly surprised how this simple exercise will help you see more; not just objects around you, but possibilities and opportunities you may be missing.

View post:
How much do we really 'see', even with good eyesight - Telegraph.co.uk

This entry was posted on March 3, 2020 at 1:46 pm and is filed under Blindness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |