TPO 13 - Question 4

A sample Answer to this speaking in text:

In the lecture, the professor talks about perceptual constancy which means we have no problem recognizing an object when the angle or distance from which we are viewing it changes. The first example is when we see a plate from up front, it appears to be a perfect circle, but when we tilt it, although now the plate looks like an oval, we can still recognize it as the same plate. In the second example, the professor will look bigger to a student sitting in the front row, let’s say the student sits in the back row the next class, this time the professor will look smaller, but the student will have no problem recognizing the professor.

1. Let's take an everyday example-an ordinary round plat like you'd find in a kitchen.
2. If you hold the plate directly in front of your face and look at it, what shape do you see?
3. A perfect circle, right?
4. Suppose you tilt the plate to a different angle, to a horizontal position, like you are planning to put food on it.
5. Still a perfect circle?
6. No, the circle is now stretched out, flattened into an oval.
7. Do you conclude the plate has actually changed shape, or that it is a different object, not the same plate?
8. Of course not, it looks different, but we perceive it as still being the same.
9. Here is a different example.
10. This classroom we are in, it is fairly large, right?
11. Now, from up close, from the front row, I appear to be relatively big, bigger than if you were in the last row, right?
12. But let's say you are sitting in a front row today, but tomorrow you are sitting in the back row.
13. From back there I am going to look smaller, but you don't think I've actually gotten smaller.
14. You don't think you are seeing a different professor, a guy who looks like me except he is smaller.
15. No matter where you are, up close or for away, you understand without evening thinking about it that I am the same size, the same person.