An Explanation of the Processes of Depth Perception and Size Constancy
Depth perception and and Size constancy are two very valuable assets we humans have to help us view and function in the world around us. Without these two things our lives as we know it would be much more difficult and challenging.
The first of the two I will go over is depth perception. Depth perception helps us to estimate an objects distance is from us. By just simply looking at something like an oncoming car we can tell about how far away it is. A question used to come up pertaining depth perception. The question was: Is depth perception a learned skill or simply an instinct? Well in 1960 Elanor Gibson and Richard Walk discovered an answer to this question. One day when Gibson was having a picnic by the Grand Canyon and she wondered: Would a toddler peer over the edge of the canyon and back up or would they not recognize the danger and walk in. To answer her question she set up a lab at Cornell University with Walk. In their lab they put 6-14 month old babies on a safe canyon ledge and had the children's' mothers coax them to go over the ledge, but they refused. This proved that depth perception was something we were born with rather than taught or conditioned to learn.
The second and last topic that I will discuss in this objective is Size Constancy. Many people are probably familiar with depth perception. It is something that is fairly common knowledge, and something many people have probable discusses at some point in their lives, but size constancy seems to be a little bit more of a foreign idea to most. Even though size constancy not quite as common knowledge as depth perception it is really a quite simple thing to understand. Size constancy simply means the ability we humans have to perceive an object as having a constant size even tough it may look significantly smaller at a distance. For example when you are walking to your car in a larger city and you see your vehicle from two or three blocks away it appears to be rather small, but in our heads we know it is big enough to hold us. This example really shows the connection we have between size constancy and our perception of depth. In this example the size of the car we see also gives us insight on how far away from the car we are. As you can see the concepts of depth perception and size constancy work very closely together. Below is another good demonstration of size constancy. In the picture on the left we see a woman standing considerably closer to the camera than the man behind her, but we perceive that he is around the same size as the woman. In the picture on the right the man was photo shopped next to the woman, and this looks odd to us because the man is so much shorter than her.
The first of the two I will go over is depth perception. Depth perception helps us to estimate an objects distance is from us. By just simply looking at something like an oncoming car we can tell about how far away it is. A question used to come up pertaining depth perception. The question was: Is depth perception a learned skill or simply an instinct? Well in 1960 Elanor Gibson and Richard Walk discovered an answer to this question. One day when Gibson was having a picnic by the Grand Canyon and she wondered: Would a toddler peer over the edge of the canyon and back up or would they not recognize the danger and walk in. To answer her question she set up a lab at Cornell University with Walk. In their lab they put 6-14 month old babies on a safe canyon ledge and had the children's' mothers coax them to go over the ledge, but they refused. This proved that depth perception was something we were born with rather than taught or conditioned to learn.
The second and last topic that I will discuss in this objective is Size Constancy. Many people are probably familiar with depth perception. It is something that is fairly common knowledge, and something many people have probable discusses at some point in their lives, but size constancy seems to be a little bit more of a foreign idea to most. Even though size constancy not quite as common knowledge as depth perception it is really a quite simple thing to understand. Size constancy simply means the ability we humans have to perceive an object as having a constant size even tough it may look significantly smaller at a distance. For example when you are walking to your car in a larger city and you see your vehicle from two or three blocks away it appears to be rather small, but in our heads we know it is big enough to hold us. This example really shows the connection we have between size constancy and our perception of depth. In this example the size of the car we see also gives us insight on how far away from the car we are. As you can see the concepts of depth perception and size constancy work very closely together. Below is another good demonstration of size constancy. In the picture on the left we see a woman standing considerably closer to the camera than the man behind her, but we perceive that he is around the same size as the woman. In the picture on the right the man was photo shopped next to the woman, and this looks odd to us because the man is so much shorter than her.
Below I have posted two links. The first is a link to a video on the concept of depth perception. In the video they conduct a similar experiment to the one done by Gibson and Walk. The second link is also a video. This video deals with the concept of size constancy. The video gives a short little explanation on what size constancy is and shows a man walking up and down a set of stairs. Even thought he moves farther away and gets smaller we know that he is still in reality the same size.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cqNhHrMJA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_dfTZfr7Z0
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cqNhHrMJA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_dfTZfr7Z0