Mind & EverydayFact

Stare at one point long enough and your surroundings dissolve.

Ignaz Troxler described this in 1804: fixate rigidly on a point and unchanging stimuli at the edge of your visual field fade and disappear. The neurons involved adapt to constant input and stop reporting it. Faint, blurred, far-out stimuli vanish fastest.

Useful: Your perception reports change, not state – which is why your eyes never stop moving.

Source: en.wikipedia.org

Wahrnehmung

Difficulty:

Related cards

Half the viewers missed a gorilla walking through the frame.In 1999 Simons and Chabris showed a video of players passing a basketball. The task: count the …
A warm lecturer also looks more attractive. Same man, same face.In 1977 Nisbett and Wilson showed students two videos of the same lecturer with a Belgian accent …
The person you're talking to got swapped. You don't notice.In 1998 Simons and Levin had a stranger ask pedestrians for directions. Two workers carried a door …
Your eyes can decide which syllable you hear.Harry McGurk and John MacDonald showed in Nature in 1976: hear "ba-ba" while watching lips form …
Every decision under uncertainty has four possible outcomes.Hit, miss, false alarm, correct rejection: signal detection theory, born from 1950s radar research …
You cannot switch off reading, even when you want to.When the word RED is printed in blue ink and you must name the ink colour, you stumble. John Ridley …
The world's most famous advertising experiment never happened.In 1957 James Vicary claimed flashed messages in a Fort Lee cinema raised popcorn sales by 57.5 and …
The metal spoon isn't colder than the wooden one.Both sit at room temperature, about 20 degrees. But your skin doesn't measure temperature – it …

Keep reading

This card belongs to the topic Mind & Everyday. Every card is short, cites a source and can be saved – due ones come back by themselves later.

About Doomlearn · Projects · Legal notice · Privacy · Terms