thanks for that ; is that all neccessary for vce knowledge ?
In your opinion, are visual constancies innate or learned? Give reasons.
thanks !
Well, I'd say a combination of innate and learnt. Our ability to use constancies relies on familiarity or past experience with objects. Thus, it is to an extent learnt. However, studies have showed that when infants are presented with simple objects at different distances, they were able to demonstrate that one was further away from the other, suggesting that some basic elements of constancies may be innate (I'll try and find that study in a tick - this is just from memory.) I'll get back to you on that one though, I'll do some more research on it.
Perhaps someone with a university psychology text book + psychology database will be able to provide some more insight into the last question?
I know it's been ages since you've asked that question, but I've just opened my uni textbook and voila la, there's information about this. According to the textbook, much of perception is influenced by culture of the person (Passer & Smith, 2008). For example when presented with a flat picture of an archer pointing his bow out to a field with an elephant and deer, people from tribal communities tend to say that his is pointing at the elephant because if you drew a straight line from the arrow, it would hit the elephant first (Hudson, 1960, citied in Passer & Smith, 2008). However, in Western societies, we would say he will hit the deer, because we have been trained from seeing so many 2D pictures to 'turn' them into 3D ones, and if we were to do that, the deer would seem to be the thing that he is aiming for.
Passer and Smith also provides a study that people who live in "rounded environments" (Passer & Smith, 2008, p. 165) will not be deceived by the Muller-Lyer Illusion.
References:Passer, M. W., & Smith, R. E. (2008).
Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill.