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recap: there was that pretty famous old study/experiment where people wore special glasses that flipped the world upside down visually. It didn't take very long

recap: there was that pretty famous old study/experiment where people wore special glasses that flipped the world upside down visually. It didn't take very long for their brains to figure out how to "see" normally with this inverted information. Then things were able to switch back when they stopped wearing the glasses, with the footnote that after the experience they did experience some random scene flipping as if their brains had trouble sticking with an interpretation. I don't know if this study has ever been reproduced or attempted. I bring it up to say, it would be interesting to test facial recognition in the same way that this piece is talking about with subjects wearing "those" glasses..

AndrewOMartin 3y ago
This experiment has been reproduced in one way or another. Most significantly by Jan Degenaar, who spent many hours wearing "left to right inverting goggles", in his excellent and readable thesis "Perceptual engagement, a sensorimotor approach to phenomenal experience". To my mind, the most important observation is that the scene did not "fully" invert "back to normal", but it was only visuals which Degenaar had appropriately re-learned which appeared "normal". For example, on the first day, walking down a street would make him see a car drive down the road to one side of him, but he'd hear it on the other side of him. Later on, the vision and the sound appeared on the same side, but if he looked at the number plate it was still "backwards". He had learned to locate sound while wearing inverting goggles, so the experience was "normal", but not learned to read while wearing inverting goggles, so that experience was still "strange". Other papers, such as "The myth of upright vision" show that the change happens faster than can be attributed to "neural plasticity". https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=1962488607431732206&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=19624886074317322...
derefr 3y ago
Hypothesis: if everything was upside down but faces were still upright, then your brain wouldn’t adapt to seeing the world upside down.
theGeatZhopa 3y ago
I always wanted to try that, but with the scene randomly flipping - no, thanks, no more
klntsky 3y ago
> I bring it up to say, it would be interesting to test facial recognition in the same way that this piece is talking about with subjects wearing "those" glasses.. Yep. They definitely shouldn't have twisted poor dude's neck 180 degrees just for the experiment.

AndrewOMartin 3y ago

This experiment has been reproduced in one way or another. Most significantly by Jan Degenaar, who spent many hours wearing "left to right inverting goggles", in his excellent and readable thesis "Perceptual engagement, a sensorimotor approach to phenomenal experience". To my mind, the most important observation is that the scene did not "fully" invert "back to normal", but it was only visuals which Degenaar had appropriately re-learned which appeared "normal". For example, on the first day, walking down a street would make him see a car drive down the road to one side of him, but he'd hear it on the other side of him. Later on, the vision and the sound appeared on the same side, but if he looked at the number plate it was still "backwards". He had learned to locate sound while wearing inverting goggles, so the experience was "normal", but not learned to read while wearing inverting goggles, so that experience was still "strange". Other papers, such as "The myth of upright vision" show that the change happens faster than can be attributed to "neural plasticity". https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=1962488607431732206&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5 https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=19624886074317322...

derefr 3y ago

Hypothesis: if everything was upside down but faces were still upright, then your brain wouldn’t adapt to seeing the world upside down.

theGeatZhopa 3y ago

I always wanted to try that, but with the scene randomly flipping - no, thanks, no more

klntsky 3y ago

> I bring it up to say, it would be interesting to test facial recognition in the same way that this piece is talking about with subjects wearing "those" glasses.. Yep. They definitely shouldn't have twisted poor dude's neck 180 degrees just for the experiment.