The peephole effect

What an interesting experiment!!

There is this property of human perception. Perceptual Constancy, it is called. You see a red paper in a dim light or a bright light, you see it as red only. You see an elephant from a far off distance and a mice that is close by. The retinal image of the elephant is much smaller than that created by the mice, yet we succesully use depth and distance cues and assess the shapes accurately. When we look at a rectangle, say from a side and not straight on, the image created on our retina is that of a trapezoid, and not a rectangle. Still it remains the same rectangle. A door remains a door itself even as it swings to and fro , changing the sensory experience. Perceptual experience, however in all the cases is a constant.

Now, the experiment is so. Take an opaque black screen. Put a small peeping hole and keep a black shirt on the other side and look through the peeping hole. The shirt actually looks white!! As the only information the eye receieves is from the light reflected from shirt, and it has few info to compare it with, it sees the black as white! Relativity and context in perception.

makes me think. it can be extrapolated to so many real life phenomenon. I mean narrower the person's experience, the faultier the perception. yea, its common sense knowledge. but now thre is science to prove it.

does that mean the frog in the well was the one who saw a better sky than the kite?