Looking at life on the slant

It is generally believed that the brain does not come 'hard-wired' but must instead rely on experience to form the correct connections. There are plenty of animal experiments to support this view, and it makes sense that the brain should be able to adapt itself to an unpredictable world. But testing this idea in humans is more difficult.

It is impossible, of course, to do experimental manipulations on children, but David Whitaker and Paul McGraw of the Department of Optometry have done the next best thing - they have taken advantage of a natural experiment to show that our experience determines what we perceive. We are all exposed to letters printed in italics, which have a characteristic tilt to the right (typically 5 to 10 degrees), as do many digital numerical displays.

Everyday object, new perception - digital experience shows life at a slant As Drs Whitaker and McGraw show, the familiarity causes the brain to play tricks on us. They asked volunteers to judge the orientation of letters, numbers, or meaningless patterns of stripes. For the letters and numbers, subjects judged leftward-tilted numbers to be farther from the vertical than rightward-tilted ones. Yet they showed no sensitivity for stripes. The familiarity of rightward-tilted letters and numbers has apparently reduced our sensitivity to their tilt; as the authors say, it seems that everyday perceptions can be markedly influenced by visual experience.

The ideal way to prove their idea would be to repeat the experiment in a culture that provides little exposure to italic lettering or digital displays. But where would you find anyone who has not seen a digital watch these days?

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University - Public Relations - Annual Reports - 2000 Contents - Research

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