Reaction Time, Synesthesia, and Sense Perception

Activity A—sense perception, reaction time, and learning
3.) Played the game 5 times, here are the recorded results:

Trial	Number of Dots	Percentage Change in Score*
1	32	0%
2	35	(35-32)/32 * 100=9.40%
3	39	(39-32)/32 * 100=21.8%
4	40	(40-32)/32 * 100=25.0%
5	40	25.0%

4.) Sense perception and reason affected my score because as I continued to do it I became faster as I was more focused and therefore aware of the blog dot, I also realized I could click quicker and still wouldn't miss any most of the time. My reaction time improved each time, and I definitely learned from early trials.

Activity B—synesthesia and the Stroop test

7.) Synesthesia is condition where senses cross over, for example, when someone hears certain sounds when they see certain colors, or tastes certain tastes when they hear certain music intervals.

8.) When I listen to various sorts of music I just experience the hearing sense, unfortunately. I feel like I would like to have synesthesia, it sounds like you can experience life more that way.

11.) Records for Interactive Stroop Effect Experiment:

 

Word Set 1 Time =20.182

Word Set 2 Time = 20.826

Difference:20.826-20.182=0.644

(I expected the first word set to be words with different colors, I didn't realize it was just all the words with their own color at first, so I went a lot slower than I would have if I had known that.)

12.) The Stroop Effect is when the brain has to deal with two stimuli simultaneously and thus its operations are slowed, like when it is trying to name a color of a word that is a different color. This shows that the interference of different stimuli in the environment can slow down the brain's basic processes as it gets overwhelmed with, for example, determining a color and reading a word, which is does at different speeds to begin with.

The Biology of Sense Perception

Chosen concept: the just noticeable difference.
Definition: The just noticeable difference is when there are two or more things that look extremely similar but are different by just a very small aspect. It's when we don't perceive something because of what we expect from perceiving, visually, something very similar to it.
Two examples illustrating the just noticeable difference:
a.) Personal experience-I remember when I was child I would play games in coloring books and school magazines where I would have to look at two images and find differences between them, circling the small things I found. The reason it can be so difficult is that when looking at one image you immediately perceive its general appearance, so when you look at the other you become unsure whether something very small and particular was in the first image. This demonstrates that prior visual perception has affected your perception of the other image because your brain notices that it is almost the same at first glance, and glides over the smaller details.

b.) Related to an area of knowledge-This ties into the area of knowledge called the arts. For example, an artist sometimes takes advantage of this aspect of the human brain and can base a painting, for example, off of it. If said artist paints two pieces of art that look the same at first, but he actually painted it in slightly lighter hues or moved the main focus a little to the right, it can be considered an art display to have the two paintings next to each other, as one may have to really study the pictures to find the differences, and may even find they prefer one to the other due to the just noticeable difference.

Vegetative State Situation & January Presentation Topic

1.) A real life situation related to vegetative state patients is one where a family must be faced with the decision to keep a loved one alive if they are in such a state and completely dependent on machines for survival. We discussed situations like this in French class one day and debated whether or not it was right to decide for the person in the vegetative state whether or not they should live. It was a really interesting debate, everyone had varying views, since it is about a life. 

2.) TOK KI questions for this situation:

• Can someone's life be put in the hands of another?
• Is technology getting too advanced?
• Is it wrong to depend on machines despite the convenience?
• Can we ever really know how someone is feeling?

3.) Our topic for the January presentation is: "What's more important to growth in knowledge in the sciences: facts or ignorance?" A real life situation involving this topic could be a group of scientists working in a cancer research facility: is it the previous facts about the human body and disease that will aid them in their research or will it be delving into the unknown that leads them to the answer?

TOK KI questions for this situation:

• Are "facts" ever really set in stone?
• Are discoveries made because of prior knowledge or because of curiosity due to ignorance?
• Is our ignorance more valuable than our knowledge?
• Is it better to know of something before hand, or to know nothing of it and not be limited by prior "facts"?