The information we take in with our eyes may not be processed in an entirely objective way. A research team lead by Witt of Colorado State University has, over approximately the last decade, published studies indicating that “vision can change as a function of action…Among Witt’s best-known experiments: When baseball players are hitting better, they see the ball as bigger. When someone lacks fitness or is carrying a heavy backpack, they see a hill as steeper.”
In a paper in Psychological Science, Witt, Tenhundfeld and Tymoski share that they asked participants in a new study to play “a game very much like Pong, a ball bounces across a screen, and participants use a joystick to block the ball with a paddle of varying sizes…the ‘Pong effect’ is when the ball appears faster when the paddle is smaller, even though the speed remains unchanged. The Pong effect supports Witt’s hypotheses about actions influencing vision…Witt added post-experiment surveys to gather data on whether participants guessed the experiments’ purpose, and whether their inferences affected how they saw the ball…Few guessed the nature of the experiment (bigger paddle = ball appears slower). But, critically, the Pong effect showed up regardless of the participants’ level of insight into the experiments’ true purpose.’”
Anne Manning. 2018. “Pong Paddles and Perception: Our Actions Influence What We See.” Press release, Colorado State University, https://natsci.source.colostate.edu/pong-paddles-perception-actions-influence-see/
Sally Augustin, PhD, a cognitive scientist, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com), a monthly subscription newsletter and free daily blog, where recent and classic research in the social, design, and physical sciences that can inform designers’ work are presented in straightforward language. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.