On hiding in plain sight

I attended this interesting presentation hosted by the New York Academy of Science.

At the start Apollo Robins worked his way through the auditorium in search of an item secretly handed to an audience member. I have a hunch that while he was looking for the hidden object he was also “interviewing” potential pickpocket marks. Apollo shook hands, nodded to people, called out greetings and so on and did not find the hidden item but he did take all sorts of other things like wallets, watches, and electronic gadgets without permission or protest. I think everyone he called up to stage later in the evening were people who passed his interview. Passing an interview usually means showing a certain lack of awareness and not coincidentely the limits of awareness was the theme of the evening.

Dr. Koch presented some experiments for us to try. The most numerous had something to do with change blindness. Change blindness is very interesting for many reasons. It is an important basis for an argument that denies the existence of some kind of “model” of the world constructed by our brains. The argument goes like this. There is no model of the world in the brain, and no mind’s eye to look at it either, and maybe little or no memory. How could there be if we literally cannot see what is in front of our face or remember most details of a scene? The world our bodies inhabit is the only point of reference and it also serves as our memory.

In any case change blindness reveals certain limits of our perception. My position is that vision is a skill that we begin to develop at a very early stage of life. If you recognize how limited vision is, then you’ll want to be as skillful as possible to see as much as possible. There are skills you can use when confronted by magic acts and change blindness tests. In the case of change blindness tests put your foveal vision slightly above the top center of the image frame and use use your vision outside the focal point to look at the image. In other words, your focal point is off the image completely and you won’t be able to see it very clearly. If you do this right you’ll pick up the change very quickly. The area outside your focal point is sensitive to value change and you can detect the change as a kind of motion or subtle blink, then move your focal point to the area to confirm. This is similar to noticing the movement in the corner of your eye made by a rodent on the street, which you immediately turn to focus on. Your focal point is so small that if you start with putting it somewhere in the middle of the image it will take a great deal of time to spot the change while you are laboring to move your tiny point of focus over the image in haphazard fashion. I think black and white images are easier because it is easier to detect the value change than color images. There is a blank white frame between each image and this looks like a blink and this is what makes the task difficult. Notice that this technique has nothing to do with a language based interpretation of the meaning of the image.

Here’s a scientific paper that claims to show in the lab what I am claiming here: that vision is a skill and with training you can reduce your change blindness reaction time.

My “Eccentric Vision Drawings” use the technique I’ve been describing. Thinking about change blindness experiments inspired this approach.

Apollo performed a fun act that involved a coin that seemed to appear and disappear in amazing ways. This is a popular act so chances are you have seen a version of it somewhere. First he showed us a coin with an audience member standing next to him on stage (an unaware mark, no doubt). Then began a monologue during which it seemed as though the coin was disappearing from both Apollo’s hands, only to appear behind the ear of the participant, then disappearing again, and so on. The vision skills needed for this are similar to the change blindness test but this is a much more difficult task. The tactics are almost opposite the change blindness test because at the beginning you see the coin and know where to look. For example, if your focal point is on the motionless fist that holds the coin, you’ll notice a great deal of movement in your peripheral vision and it takes a considerable amount of restrain from swinging your focal point in that direction and in so doing losing track of the coin. Then if that hand holding the coin does begin to move it will be very difficult to track the coin to its next resting place because it will intersect a flurry of movement and you’ll have to restrain yourself from sending your focal point on a ballistic trajectory to where the coin is not located. This exercise requires a very high and special kind of attention that is broader than normal and I felt fatigued by the end of it. I lost track of the coin several times, but sometimes I did know exactly where it was hidden. You have to be as alert as you can be and control your focal point and it takes practice. Words escape me here, you’ll have do it yourself. You can find Apollo in Las Vegas, I’m sure he’d love to pick your pocket if you let him.

I found it fatiguing to track the coin during Apollo’s act. I have noticed a similar kind of fatigue somewhere else: watching television. This may seem counter intuitive because television is supposed to be an escape from work. I have never owned a television. The visual stimulation characteristic of television is not something I expose myself to frequently. I have noticed that when watching television for the first time after a prolonged period of no television, the first few viewing moments are very intense because the motion and rapid cuts are exciting and I see a great deal. Then a certain kind of fatigue sets in that manifests itself as a difficulty concentrating, and I know I can’t see half of what is on the screen anymore, and this bothers me because the pace set by the television grinds on relentlessly. This exhaustion set in within 10 minutes or less. I prefer media that moves at a speed I can keep up with or allows me to set the pace. This also suggests how much energy it takes to really pay attention and why during our day to day moments the tendency is to not to look very hard because it can be a great deal of work.

The title of the program “see what you’ve been missing” is apt. The truth is that we don’t see a great deal of what is in front of us even when we think we’re paying attention.