Author Archives: Yi-han Wu

Adaptation

Leave a reply

In class, we learned two examples of adaptation. First was when we looked at stripes in one direction for a really long time and when we looked at straight stripes they look like they are tilted. Another example was after we look at the swirling circles for a while and then when we looked at our hands, our skin looks like it was moving. Both of these are due to adaptation because when our visual system is adapted to a certain stimulus thus we see the stimulus when it is not present. The definition of adaptation from Dictionary.com says, “the decrease in response of sensory receptor organs, as those of vision, touch, temperature, olfaction, audition, and pain, to changed, constantly applied, environmental conditions.”
I have had a lot of experience with traveling, especially through airplanes. Every summer and sometimes winter, I fly airplanes back and forth from Taiwan to the states. When the airplane is flying, there is a constant noise coming from the engines. It is very hard to bear at first for how loud of a noise the engines make; however, after I got used to it I feel like it does not bother me anymore. A plane ride back to Taiwan usually takes about 24 hours, including two layovers. Under around 20 hours of listening to the same noise, my ears get somewhat adapted to the noise and thus when I got off the plane I still hear the engine noises in my ear. Sometimes it will last for the whole night until I fall asleep.
Another example is when I ride airplanes or boats and fairies. Whenever the plane is in the air, or when the boat is in the sea, they constantly float up and down. My vision, then, gets adapted to that motion of rising up and down. After getting off the boat or airplane, I feel like my vision does not go back to normal quickly. I still see the objects and everything around me moving up and down. There are times when it was so serious that it was even hard for me to walk straight at first. Both of these examples show adaptations in our vision and hearing. Because I was constantly stimulated by certain stimuli, hearing the noise and seeing the up and down movement, I got used to it. However, when the stimuli are not present, I still see them for a little while before they go away.

Citation
“Adaptation.” Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.

Object Recognition

4 Replies

I have a second cousin who is now only three, going on to four years old. Since the vocabulary she knows is limited, she sometimes has to use the superordinate-level category and feature theory of object recognition to name objects. Superordinate-level category of object recognition is when someone is naming objects they see in a more general term. For instance, instead of naming an object by its name, someone recognizes it by the category it is in. Feature theory of object recognition is when people recognize objects by remembering different features and parts of the object, and when they see the same features again in another object, they assume the two objects is the same thing.
Toddlers and children tend to do this when they have not enough words and experience stored in their head. When my second cousin sees something she has never seen before she uses the feature theory at times, naming objects the wrong name. For instance, when she first saw a tiger, she called it a big cat because they basically have the same features except tigers are bigger in size. Although tigers are under the cat category, she only calls it cat because it looks like a bigger cat for her.
Another example is when she was drawing a picture on newspapers once, she asked me to hand her the “pens.” She was pointing to her crayons at that time. This is not only an example of feature theory, because crayons and pens do look alike, but also an example of structural description theory. When she named crayons as pens because she knew them not only as having the similar features as pens, but also they have similar functions.
Both the examples of misnaming the tigers and crayons are also examples of superordinate-level category of recognizing objects as well. Because my second cousin is naming tigers as their general category- cats, and naming crayons in its general category- pens, this shows that she is using this concept of superordinate-level or object recognition.