[Xmca-l] Re: imagination and controlling the perception of visual illusions.

[mike cole]

Super interesting. Let me see if I can intrigue a perception expert.
mike

On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 9:05 AM, Greg Thompson <greg.a.thompson@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Lovely Huw!
>
> You say that the speed of the train suggests that it is going away. But why
> would you assume that a train would be coming into a platform from the
> right? (my experience with most CTA platforms in Chicago is that, from the
> perspective of a person standing on the platform, they enter from the
> left).
>
> It seems that you are entirely correct in suggesting that how we see things
> depends on culture (qua memories/experience/expectancies - e.g. from which
> direction a train enters a station - reminds me of an old story the German
> spy in England who was able to go unnoticed until, upon crossing an empty
> street, he looked to the left before crossing).
>
> Cheers,
> greg
>
> p.s. And thanks for this - I'll use it for my Anthro of Experience class
> since we have been doing visual perception! And I'm a sucker for a good
> illusion.
> This also seems an opportune time to remind all of Etienne and Mike's paper
> Minding the Gap. Their degradation of the stimulus example comes to mind as
> another nice example of perception being mediated by culture and history.
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 1, 2015 at 9:21 AM, Huw Lloyd <huw.softdesigns@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > I came across this meme/advert on linkedin, which is an animation of a
> tube
> > train:
> >
> >
> >
> https://buffer-pictures.s3.amazonaws.com/c2f41e8d32861d26bdecfc62f0d979e3.f009ceaeaf27dba4eb65f2ca247e9513.php
> >
> > Ignoring the glib annotation, it did seem to be a little interesting to
> > discover if there was a reliable way to manipulate the perception of the
> > direction of the train.
> >
> > Interestingly, this is something that I find I can do by imagining that I
> > can see an object within the train moving in the direction I wish, so
> that
> > perceived direction can be switched at will -- i.e. the perception of the
> > train can be shuttled back and forth.
> >
> > I'm not sure whether conditioning of memories of living in London would
> > influence this (it is a London tube train).  Also, the speed at which the
> > train is going suggests its going away, because a train coming into a
> > platform would usually, I think, be going slower.
> >
> > Best,
> > Huw
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Gregory A. Thompson, Ph.D.
> Assistant Professor
> Department of Anthropology
> 880 Spencer W. Kimball Tower
> Brigham Young University
> Provo, UT 84602
> http://byu.academia.edu/GregoryThompson
>



-- 

It is the dilemma of psychology to deal as a natural science with an
object that creates history. Ernst Boesch