I wanted to write a post about the psychology of Perception and look what ended up in my inbox! As long as you do not have a medical reason to skip this demonstration - follow the directions in the video by staring at the center of the swirling circle for 30 seconds until it changes to an image of Vincent VanGogh's "Starry Night" painting:
If the optical illusion worked correctly, the image of "Starry Night" should have appeared as it, too, was whirling and swirling even though it was not moving at all (for you doubters who think the painting was animated on Youtube, check out this version)!
This illusion happens thanks to sensory adaptation - what happens any time you get used to seeing something, hearing something, smelling something, etc. The type of adaptation you experienced is called Rapid Motion Adaptation or RMA: your brain got used to perceiving motion and you could see evidence of that when the scene switched to something that was still. The illusion is sometimes described as the Motion After Effect.
This after-effect was mentioned as early as 350 B.C. by the philosopher, Aristotle. In "Parva Naturalia" he wrote, "...when persons turn
away from looking at objects in motion, e.g. rivers, and especially
those which flow very rapidly, they find that the visual stimulations
still present themselves, for the things really at rest are then
seen moving."
An interesting twist of the RMA is that the after-effect motion seems to move in the opposite direction than the actual movement that is first seen. Record of this "Waterfall Effect" is found in Robert Addams' 1834 description of how the rocks next to a waterfall began to appear as if they were moving upwards after he had stared at the water plunging downwards.
In 2011, Glasser, Tsui, Pack, and Tadin did a series of studies on the RMA and the after-effect illusion. Although their sample sizes were small, their findings suggest that the RMA can be triggered even faster than had previously been suspected: it can be provoked after less than one second of watching movement. So even if the person was not aware of the direction of movement that they briefly saw, they were usually correct in reporting an after-effect motion in the opposite direction.
Using two macaques (monkeys), the researchers were also able to pinpoint neurons in the Medial (Middle) Temporal region of the brain that were activated when the RMA was triggered. This region is related to the processing of perceptual information. Even after a very brief view of an image in motion, the neuronal activity indicated that the monkeys' brains were responding to the follow up still images as if they were also moving. The suggestion is that similar activity occurs in our brains, too.
So even though we might call "The Starry Night" demonstration an "Optical Illusion," it is not so much our eyes playing tricks on us - instead it is evidence that our brains are adapting to the world around us.
Further Reading:
A really wonderful website on the history of the Motion After Effect. It includes larger sections from Aristotle and Addams, plus other early works that describe this effect.
Here is the Glasser et al. (2011) article if you would like to read in detail about their studies. I especially enjoyed the part about plaid stimuli - had never thought of plaid in relation to perception!
photos-public-domain.com
Many years ago I was introduced to the idea of Classical Conditioning by the story of how Ivan Pavlov trained dogs to drool when they heard a bell ring. It is basically the same story that I tell my classes today. And then I saw this meme:
Just like Pavlov's dogs related a sound to food, this dog related that song to being in the tub. This happened because every time she was about to put the dog in the tub she would sing this song until an association was formed. If we are going to get technical we could write it out like this:
The Unconditioned Stimulus automatically causes the Unconditioned Response: The wife picks up the dog (stimulus) and the dog is in the tub (response).
After an association is formed, the Conditioned Stimulus now causes the Conditioned Response: after many repetitions of singing before placing the dog in the tub, the song (stimulus) is finally all it takes to get the dog in the tub (response).
So this made me realize that after all these years I have formed a strong association between the word Pavlov and dogs! Every time I have heard the name Pavlov there has been mention of his drooling dogs. And here in this meme...a dog!
Can we have Classical Conditioning without dogs? Of course. In fact, in this meme I would say that the wife has formed a strong association! The text explains that she used to sing the song for their dog, but now the wife sings the same song for their baby. Apparently, this woman cannot bathe anyone without singing this song.
Of course the meme does leave us with some issues.
First: I'm into psych but for goodness sake, if you see Classical Conditioning in action keep one hand on your baby when you snap a picture for social media. If the baby's bathtub had tipped off of the sink, she could have formed an association with bathing and FEAR, much like how Little Albert was Classically Conditioned (by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner) to fear a white rat.
Second: What is the mysterious bath song that the wife sings? An association from my childhood makes me wonder if it is this. Of course, you may have a different association from your own bath time experiences. Any suggestions? (Keep it clean, of course.)
Further Reading:
A NY Times article on a Pavlov biography. Who knew? Pavlov is best known as a Behaviorist but he was pretty interested in canine mental health!
An APA Monitor on Psychology piece about what happened to Little Albert after the experiment was over (hint: they never UN-trained him of his fear.) The actual journal article can be purchased or accessed for free through PsycArticles at your college library.
Maybe you love Valentine's Day or maybe you loathe it, either way it is hard to miss that it's happening this week with all the red and white, heart-shaped gift items in the stores. In honor of this day of Public Displays of Affection, I bring you this week's meme:
Do you agree with this meme?
When I saw this I thought of two recent studies that my friend Dr. Benjamin Le is publishing with his colleagues. The first study asked 200 participants, who were currently in romantic relationships, about the level of satisfaction and commitment in their relationships. Those same people gave the researchers access to their personal Facebook profiles; assistants then looked at each profile to see if the participants had a) set their relationship statuses to "in a relationship" and b) if their profile pictures were selfies or "relfies" (relationship selfies) with their romantic partners. The assistants used what they found to guess the level of satisfaction and commitment of each participant's romantic relationship.
It turned out that they were particularly likely to guess that a relationship was great when a person's status was set to "in a relationship" AND that person's profile pic was a relfie. The guesses by the assistants were also very similar to the actual self-reports from the participants themselves.
In the second study, the researchers got creative and made up fake Facebook profiles for imaginary people. Some of the profiles had the relationship status set to "in a relationship" and others didn't; some of the profiles had selfies as profile pictures while others had relfies. The researchers also varied the character of the status updates: some gave a lot of personal details about the relationship and gushed about the romantic partner; others were positive about the partner but did not give a lot of relationship details; and other statuses were not about the romantic partner at all.
One hundred new participants (who did not realize that what they were seeing was not real) got to look at these fake profiles and were asked to rate the imaginary people from these profiles on the quality of their relationship satisfaction and commitment. The participants also were asked how much they liked each of the imaginary people who owned these profiles.
Similar to what was found in the first study, the participants were most likely to think the imaginary person was in a great relationship if his or her Facebook profile included"in a relationship" AND that person's profile pic was a relfie. In addition, when status updates included personal details about the relationship and ooey-gooey gushing about the romantic partner - the relationship was especially likely to be judged as a good one.
However, those mushy status updates came at a price: the imaginary people who posted those types of statuses were the LEAST LIKED by the participants. TMI much?
So, is the meme correct? Yes and no according to these findings. If you display your romantic relationship on Facebook because you have an awesome relationship you can bet that your message will be read loud and clear by your Facebook friends: they are likely to interpret your status, relfies, and posts to mean that your relationship is solid. However, the more lovey-dovey your status updates are...your friends may start to like you a bit less.
You win some, you lose some. Happy Valentine's Day!
Further Reading:
You can read Dr. Le's description of his studies and other research related to relfies on the Science of Relationships website. This is great site run by psychologists (two of my friends!) that provides good research on relationships in a fun to read format.
No syllabus required here - just an interest in Psychology! Part of why I love teaching Psychology is that it is a topic that we can all relate to: why people do the weird things that they do. Let's face it, people - especially OTHER people - are funny. And where there is humor there is usually a meme.
But what is behind that meme? Often it's Psychology!
Each week I'll post a meme or a hot topic and relate it to Psych. Real Psychology based on theory and research findings. The big ideas in everyday language.
Why? For fun and for my students. And for anyone who likes Psychology.
In fact, I invite you to send me things you see online that relate to Psychology. Send me an email thatspsych@gmail.com if you see something online and think - That's Psych!
To start us off...
Back in the 1950s and 60s, Jean Piaget would say that this little guy is probably in the first stage of Cognitive Development: the Sensorimotor Stage from birth until age two. Piaget believed that at the beginning of this stage kids are missing something called "Object Permanence," meaning that once a kid can't see something - she believes that it has gone *poof* and disappeared out into the Universe. He thought this was true because very young babies will give up searching for a rattle if it is covered up by a blanket - even if the rattle sound keeps going! It is not until the child is about a year and a half old that she will understand that out of sight does not mean "gone forever" and will continue her quest for the rattle under the blanket. At that point she would have developed Object Permanence.
Piaget's ideas came from observing children's behavior. In the 1980s Renee Baillargeon and her colleagues tested Object Permanence in a lab and found results that suggest that a baby might not search for a hidden rattle even though, at least at some gut level, he believes that the rattle still exists in the Universe. Baillargeon created an experiment in which four-and-a-half month old babies witnessed a screen rotating over a solid box. Sometimes it would rotate over the box and stop as if it were blocked by the box. This is normal in our world and did not seem to surprise the babies. Sometimes it would rotate all the way flat as if the box had disappeared (in fact, a trusty assistant had sneaked it out from behind the screen without the child seeing) - now THIS surprised the babies very much - they looked a lot longer at this impossible event! I bet they looked like the little guy pictured above! If, as Piaget had thought, those babies had assumed that the box was gone once it was covered by the screen, they should not have been surprised when the screen rotated all the way down.
This demonstration suggests that the little boy in the picture may have a gut feeling that you don't actually disappear when you are playing peekaboo - even if he doesn't search behind your hands to see your face. If that is true - can you think of why babies laugh so hard when you play peekaboo with them?
Further reading:
Piaget's Sensorimotor Stage
Baillargeon's study
