Sense perception

1. Does a tree falling make a noise if no-one is in the woods when it falls? Sense perception

2. A Man….. • A man sits in a café in Sai King watching the sea. There is a light breeze in the air and he feels the warmth of the sun on his skin and smells the saltiness of the sea. He is drinking orange juice and can smell his coffee being brewed and the fresh smell of toasted bread. You are nearby reading the SCMP. When you look up a few minutes later you notice that he isn't moving. You learn later that he has had a sensory breakdown. • First the rich taste of the coffee disappeared and then he couldn’t tell if it was hot or cold. He then dropped the coffee cup to the floor, it crashed to the ground burning him on his arm – though he did not feel it or hear the cup smash. Within seconds he was overcome by silence and darkness…..

3. A Man…. • How does that story make you feel….

4. Sense Perception • What are your 5 senses? • If for some reason you had to lose one of • your senses: • Which one would you be most willing to lose? • Which one would you be least willing to lose? • Why?

5. Sense Perception

6. Empiricism • Knowledge based on perceptual experience

7. To what extend do our senses give us knowledge of the world as it really is? • Get into groups of 3 based on a common subject you all study. • Identify how and where you use your senses for that IB subject. • Compare with other IB subjects. • Do you think that perception is a more important source of knowledge than others? Are there any areas of knowledge in which it plays no role?

8. Common Sense Realism • Perception is a passive and relatively straightforward process which gives us an accurate picture of reality. Colours, sounds and smells exist ‘out there’ and the act of observation does not affect what is observed. • Is this an adequate explanation for our perception of the world?

9. The Eye

10. The Ear

11. Is there any sensation before the blips reach the brain? • What would happen if you cut your optic nerve? • Brain has an enormous task of synthesing all those blip, blip, blips into our conscience experience of the world • Your whole world is made up of blip, blip, blips • How the brain constructs the ‘real’ world from mere blip, blip, blips is one of the greatest mysteries of modern science and philosophy

12. Do we all see the same world? • How do we know? Is the sky blue the same colour for everyone. • Even if you could see someone elses ‘blue’ (which you cant because then it would be your blue!) would it be the same? Optical illusions

13. Optical Illusions • Can you see that the brain always tries to construct a plausible story for what is going on that goes beyond the visual sense data input. I cdnoultbblveieetaht I cluodaulacltyuesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmealpweor of the Hmuanmnid! Aoccdrnig to a rscheearchatCmabrigde Uinervitisy, it deosn’tmttaer in wahtoredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olnyiprmoatnttihng is taht the frist and lsatltteer be in the rghitpalce. The rset can be a taotlmses and you can still raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamnmniddeos not raedervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!

14. Optical Illusions • There are several interpretations for many of the optical illusions, therefore is there another interpretation for the entire world? • One that is entirely beyond humans and one that we will never know? • Maybe we will never know the ‘real world’

15. Do we know the real world? • Find out about the sensory receptors of three of the following: • bees, buzzards, chameleons, crabs, dolphins, elephants, grasshoppers, star-nosed moles, pigeons, rabbits, snakes, fish, bats, sharks, • Write about how these organisms would differ in the way they perceive the world compared to how you perceive the world.

16. How reliable are your senses? • Finished files are the result of years of scientific study combined with the experience of many years. • Count the number of ‘F’s in this sentence

17. The answer is 6 • Many of you will have missed out the ‘f’ in of • Why? • Language is to blame! • ‘of’ sounds like ‘ov’ • Language influences how we interpret our senses

18. Rainbow of colours?

19. How many colours are in the spectrum? • Why did you give the answer you gave? • Is it because of culture and language? • Are there more colours?

20. Why are we tricked by illusions? • Perception goes far beyond, seeing or hearing or any other sense • It involves interpretation, this is something we generally have control over • We see largely what we expect to see, this usually works because our brains are very well adapted to their environment • Factors which affect interpretation include language, paradigms and cultural expectations • There is a subjective element, the world we see only exists in our minds • Our perception gives us, in our minds, structures which aren’t necessarily there

21. Selectivity of Perception • What factors affect our perception? • Emotions, culture, language, education, training……………… • Tasks from van de Lagemaat p91-93

22. Perception, conception and the influence of culture A child dying in poverty as seen by a: • Doctor: • An economist • A social worker • The child’s father A sunset as seen by a: • Religious figure • A painter • A farmer • A physicist

23. Perception, conception and the influence of culture A tree as seen by a: • Biologist • Logger • Environmentalist • Native American Explain how education and training can affect what we perceive: • Biologist looking down a microscope

24. Perception, conception and the influence of culture To what extent do you think that the culture you come from affects the way in which you see the world? In what emotional state do you think we see the world with the greatest clarity?

25. Real or Hoax? • Real The poster held by a protester was created, unintentionally, by a poster maker in Bangladesh. He downloaded a picture of Osama bin Laden from the web that showed Bin Laden sitting next to 'evil Bert'. He didn't realize the satirical intent of the picture, and so included it in the poster.

26. Real or Hoax? Real The cat with the strange eyes is real, and her name is Queeny. She lives in Bangalore, India. Her picture was taken in September, 2003 for Reuters.

27. Real or Hoax • Real • The x-ray is quite real. It shows the stomach of an Israeli woman who accidentally swallowed a fork after inserting it down her throat in order to remove a cockroach! The x-ray was taken in July 2003.

28. Real or Hoax? • Hoax • The photo was originally a single waterspout was taken in June 2001 in the Gulf of Mexico. Two more waterspouts were added to the photograph.

29. Real or Hoax • Hoax • A postcard created by Alfred Stanley Johnson in 1911. The children posed with wooden props and the melon slice was cut and pasted into the picture to create the illusion of a giant melon slice.

30. Real or Hoax? Real This is a photograph of a gym in San Diego.

31. Real or Hoax? Hoax Louis Vuitton is not selling designer SARS masks. The mask in this image is a digital creation.

32. Real or Hoax? Real This photo was taken on the Earlham Road in Norwich. Underground chalk mines caused a massive sink-hole to appear in the road.

33. Real or Hoax? Hoax If you look closely you can see that the section of the picture with the bears in it was digitally inserted into a scene of a suburban house.

34. Real or Hoax? Hoax An image created by nature photographer Ralph Clevenger. It's actually a composite of four different photographs taken in Alaska, Antarctica, and California.

35. Real or Hoax? Real A real, unaltered photo taken by photographer Kurt Jones on April 19, 2003 But that's a dolphin in the wave... not a shark!

36. Do you think that ‘seeing is believing’ or ‘believing is seeing’? How do our beliefs and expectations affect the way we perceive events / things?

37. Starburst Taste Test Test knowing the colour, what flavour are the sweets? Test not knowing the colour. Can you still identify the flavour? How do the senses interrelate?

38. How useful is eye-witness testimony? • See p94 for text and task

39. There’s more to seeing than meets the eye - Change Blindness / Inattentional blindness • DVD – Surprising studies of visual awareness • Sense perception is ‘attention dependent’, you only see that to which you attend. If something occurs outside your scope of attention, even if its perfectly visible you wont see or notice it. • Sense perception is selective. Changes that affect the meaning of any scene are more likely to be noticed, other changes are ignored. Fancy dress in a normal setting.

40. There’s more to seeing than meets the eye - Change Blindness / Inattentional blindness • The brain does not build up detailed internal models of a scene, we assume our brain has a complete, coherent representation of the scene.

41. Additional thoughts on perception: • Is the mind an objective recorder of events or is perceptual processes not structured to record data but to organise meaning? • What does the mind do? • Does it organise fragments into meaningful and relevant ways into a web of beliefs about what is real and what isn’t? (Real or Hoax). Is it put into context? • Is this a weakness or an advantage? • Are we driven to find meaning?

42. Additional thoughts on perception: • Reading faces – do we rely on them to find meaning? • What if we don’t find meaning?

43. Perception and emotions? • Would you invest in this company?

44. Seminar Research: • The Gestalt Principle • In court why do we rely on eye-witness testimony? Is it reliable? • Blind artists or deaf musicians, how can they know? • Context look at the article “Pearls Before Breakfast’ – The Washington Post • Research and explain 4 optical illusions,how they work • How magicians exploit the maxim ‘the hand is quicker than the eye’. Sleights of Mind The New York Times • The limits of human perception – mixed feelings • The artist Rene Magritte • How attitudes toward people of color are reinforced in journalistic and advertising images.