Nostalgic Goodness
Today was a good day, went to uni for my miniproject meeting where we had to come up with some variation of a study about visual perception. Basically, Proffitt (a psychologist) got participants to go to the bottom of a hill and guess how steep the slope was verbally (So just saying "I think it's 45 degrees"), with a circle where they could turn a wedge to represent the slope visually and also with a platform that they could tilt to represent their perception of the slopes angle (the latter having to be done without looking at the platform) (called Haptic). He found that participants who had guessed verbally or visually always overestimated the slope's gradient. He states that it's not only the visual system that makes this exaggeration but also the body's metabolism which takes into account the energy expenditure of going up this slope. So to incite the person to not go up, it alters our perception. Or so he thinks. My group have decided to investigate whether a person going up a slope blindfolded (thus taking out the visual aspect of slope gradient perception) will estimate the slope to be as exaggeratedly steep as those who have their eyes free. We will also give two groups of people heavy backpacks, one with blindfolds ones without expecting them to give a more exaggerated gradient seeing as they spent more energy going up. It's all fun. I'll update on how it's going soon, we're meeting up on Monday after the stats lecture so we'll see !
The results found by Proffitt et Al. - The straight line is the true gradient. As you can see, both Verbal and Visual conditions give exaggerated results whereas the Haptic condition gave surestimated gradients suggesting that it visual appreciation of the slope makes our metabolism over-estimate our perception in the hope that we don't go up the slope ! Lazy
The (dark-green) wedge that you can turn up and down until you think it's gradient matches the slope's in the visual condition.
The Haptic condition with the tilting plate that the participant must move without looking at it.
Salsa was on tonight which was as good as usual ! We were worried because five minutes before the lesson was supposed to start, only three people had turned up ... Not good for the profit (I'm treasurer) ! But then, people PILED in so that we had a record number of students for one lesson (I'd estimate it at about 60 students). We did some pretty hardcore stuff, even in the first hour with some to-me-to-you (I think it's called?) which involves some over-arm manoeuvres which aren't the easiest to pull off. The second hour was as awesome as ever with a mini-dance off being incorporated into the routine. One of the fastest paced routines we've done yet because we didn't put many basics between moves.
Today's lecture was Social Psychology with some very, very quiet 50-something woman who seems to enjoy wasting time. Seriously, she started the lecture five minutes late and went into a monologue on where to find lecture notes (which we've known how to do for the past year and a half) before saying "We won't be able to finish in time". Yeah, no shizz... Still, it was an interesting subject even if not very useful in practice. All about people's perceptions of people, why they like them, why they don't. But the general conclusion was that we can't really tell which is a classic psychological phrase. "Actually, you can't measure this so here's some half-assed theory on how it might be should we all follow the same thought process". So yeah, yet another aspect of psychology that will be very, very hard to beat. And emotion is one of the hardest aspects to study because it's so unquantifiable so who knows, when brain scans get more in-depth we might get some answers...
Haven't had much time to myself today so I think I'll watch me an episode of Prison Break before bed (I'm on season two and it's AWESOME !). I was gutted when John Abruzzi got killed ! He was my favorite character :( I'll keep y'all updated on where I am in the storyline. At the moment, they're trying to dig up DB Cooper's money in this woman's garage but the cops have arrived and everyone's like "ah crap...". Awesome !
These naughty chaps have some serious running to do
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