Adults, like children, have a tendency to think vision is more informative than it is

Among the cute mistakes that children make, one is to overestimate how much information they can garner through vision. For instance, asked to judge whether they can tell apart two identical-looking, but differently weighted (or different sounding) objects, simply by looking at them, five-year-olds tend to say Yes. Now an intriguing new paper suggests this is an error that we adults fail to completely outgrow.In the second and more persuasive of their experiments, Jessica Wang and her colleagues presented 24 students with a carefully constructed box. The container was built such that a person could only identify the colour of the object inside by lifting up a cover; could only determine its temperature by putting their finger in a hole in the side; and could only judge the object's weight by lifting an attached string. The students were told that the box could contain one of eight identically shaped objects that varied according to their colour (green or white), their temperature (warm or cold) and weight (light or heavy). Next, the participants were shown a succession of photographs of a man performing one of the aforementioned three actions, alongside a query relating to one of the three possible object characteristics. For example, after seeing the man lift the cover, the participant might be asked "Does he know if the object is heavy?" (correct answer: No). After seeing the man put his finger in the side of the box, the participant might be asked "Does he know if the obje...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Authors: Source Type: blogs