For questions regarding the organization and identification of transducted sensory information in the brain and its interpretation and consolidation in the mind
22
votes
2answers
2k views
Is Golden Ratio's association with perceived beauty a myth?
Many people advocate using the Golden Ratio in design (e.g. logo design).
Is the Golden Ratio's purported aesthetic appeal supported by scientific evidence?
10
votes
1answer
382 views
Effect of words highlighting on reading comprehension
I'm interested if there are studies dealing with text understanding and POS (part of speech) coloring, or coloring syntactic/semantic information. The studies should solve the questions like:
Which ...
10
votes
1answer
177 views
Sensory Immersion Research?
Sensory deprivation is a relatively common technique for medititation and general consciousness-exploration.
However, I'm more interested in sensory immersion. That is, deliberate overstimulation as ...
11
votes
1answer
109 views
How is the size of a video related to its perceived quality?
Video is often presented at different sizes. On the Internet, many websites provide quite a few size settings. In the store, you can buy TVs of many different sizes. In both cases, it's the same ...
7
votes
0answers
68 views
Is the theory of Information Metabolism a reasonable scientific theory?
Background
I have been checking out various personality typing assessments lately when I came across a Personality typing system known as Socionics which aims at explaining relationships between ...
4
votes
2answers
900 views
Can we smell in dreams?
I'm interested in whether people can smell in their dreams.
Do people really experience smell in their dreams?
For example, if I dream of smelling a flower, will I feel the smell, too?
Is there any ...
9
votes
1answer
142 views
Is there an effect of visual expertise on eye movements when examining an image?
In the following linked image, you can see the eye movement traces of a subject examining a bust of Nefertiti (I came across this image while reading the following blog).
When I was in grade ...
7
votes
1answer
83 views
Are there shapes defined by 3 (or more) generative parameters whose mapping to psychological similarity space is known?
I am trying to generate 4 shapes that are equidistant in psychological similarity space - meaning that they are all equally discriminable from one another - which differ in 3 parameters, such that ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
Is Apple's iPhone Retina Display really accurate to human eye resolution?
Apple based their Retina Display on the following claim, as cited by Wikipedia:
The display has a contrast ratio of 800:1. The screen is marketed by Apple as the "Retina Display", based on the ...
8
votes
1answer
101 views
Hearing first but understanding later?
I have experienced this phenomenon several times and checked with other people as well.
It goes like this: you hear something, but it's just a sound with no meaning. Some seconds later, you ...
2
votes
1answer
198 views
When counting a given letter in sentences, why do people tend to omit occurrences in certain common words?
I have noticed that when I, and presumably others, count the number of times the letter F appears in the following passage:
...
12
votes
1answer
265 views
What concepts of perception should designers be aware of when designing?
Visual perception is a huge topic, much of which is relevant to the work of a designer. I have identified topics in visual memory, visual cognition and colour perception that are relevant, and I'm ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Do we recognize ourselves better when we see our mirror image?
A friend of mine recently noticed that we both have a birthmark on the face. He looked at me and said that we have exactly the same mark. But he has it left and I right. But, when looking in a mirror, ...
1
vote
3answers
240 views
Is this optical illusion the visual equivalent of binaural beats?
The optical motional illusion shown below, makes your brain see some motion, where there is none.
In my opinion it's fascinating, although after a while you get a headache. It reminds me of ...
17
votes
3answers
166 views
Why does the human visual system produce a bright patch after staring at a bright light source and looking away?
If a person looks at a bright light source, such as a light bulb or perhaps the sun for a period of time, and then looks away and closes their eyes, they typically see a bright patch in the shape of ...
10
votes
5answers
252 views
Visual search: complexity of positive vs negative search tasks
Thinking about experiments where participants perform visual search tasks, I remember hearing in a Cog Psych lecture that if the instructions of the task were of the form "find the element that has ...
6
votes
1answer
123 views
Face-Blindness: Have I seen you before?
Sometimes when I meet new people, I feel like I have seen them before. Their faces might look similar to people's faces, I have really have met before.
The wiki article on Difficulties with Facial ...
9
votes
3answers
211 views
Simulate colorblindness in non-colorblind individuals
Is there any way by which individuals with normal color vision could "see" the effects of Deuteranopia or any of the common colorblindness types, say by using special lenses or anything?
Color ...
7
votes
1answer
138 views
How do people that can't perceive 3D view a stereoscopic 3D image or movie?
According to Mendiburu (2009), 3-15% of the people can't view a stereoscopic 3D image or movie, mostly due to poor binocular vision.
Imagine one of those is in the movie theater, trying to watch a 3D ...
10
votes
1answer
153 views
What does “veridicality” mean in terms of psychology?
I'm reading the paper "Visual Space Perception and Visually Directed Action" by Loomis, Da Silva, Fujita and Fukusima (1992; pdf). In this paper, the word 'veridicality' is used in several sentences.
...
5
votes
1answer
62 views
Is there any evidence to support a correlation between how much bodily energy you are using, and how quickly time appears to pass?
It seems to me that time passes more slowly when I am drinking coffee, but when I stop, or I am tired it seems that time passes a lot faster.
Could this have something to do with the sampling rate at ...
5
votes
1answer
81 views
Phenomenon that causes music to sound like it's being played at a different tempo than remembered?
Something I've noticed now and then is that I'll be listening to a song off my music player and it sounds like it's being played in a tempo faster or slower than I remember the song being. Is this a ...
8
votes
2answers
161 views
What is the “static” in human vision called?
Sort of like a cheap digital Camera, the human eye has certain feedback that's perceived but doesn't actually exist in the real world; a little layer of Static that's especially noticeable in pitch ...
6
votes
2answers
230 views
What is the term for “What has been seen cannot be unseen” in cognitive sciences?
During a discussion with my officemate I told him that I read somewhere that the gas pillar in Carina nebula looks like a cat punching the dog; ever since then, every time my wallpaper slideshow ...
8
votes
2answers
205 views
How does the brain act on the information gained via eye saccades?
I've often heard that the process of saccading can be described as a statistical sampling technique. Specifically, the standard textbook definition of the function of saccades seems to be that the ...
9
votes
1answer
173 views
How do humans control saccades?
I've gathered the standard rational for a visual system utilizing saccades from perception textbooks: the neural cost of processing an entire scene at a high level of detail would be prohibitive, but ...
15
votes
2answers
511 views
Perception of time as a function of age
For many people time seems to run faster as they get older. That is, for an old person an hour, a day or a year seems to be shorter than for a young person.
Is there any hard data for such ...
7
votes
1answer
210 views
How do animals recognize other animals of their own species?
My motivation for this question is dog-based, but I suppose it would apply equally well to humans. How do animals recognize their own kind, particularly where there is large variation in appearance?
...
7
votes
3answers
435 views
Is it possible to improve reading speed and visual comprehension by doing exercises?
Background
I'm trying to capture detailed information from the images in my visual memory, mainly text. My daily life requires reading many documents on varying topics. I want to increase my reading ...
7
votes
1answer
137 views
How does task difficulty schedule affect the rate and efficiency of perceptual learning?
In perceptual learning (line length/orientation discrimination, visual target detection, tone frequency discrimination, etc), when training people or animals to perform a task better, is there an ...
