TJR Middle SchoolVisits

On April 6th and 8th the class visitedMrs. Kahn's seventh-grade life sciences class. Here we shared whatwe'd learned through short presentations, handouts created by thestudents, and interactive demonstrations with the seventh-graders.Below is a decription of what we did and several pictures from thedemonstrations.

The Monday Visit:

• Julie Terry began with a short introduction about why we study perception and talked about / showed some visual illusions.
• Toni Ray then talked about the basic structure of the eye and explained the blind spot demonstration.
• Joseph Heggins then briefly discussed the perceptual worlds of infants and animals. We passed around pictures which illustrate how infants see when they are newborns, 1 month old, 2 months etc. until 6months, at which point their vision is nearly as good as an adults. We also brought a couple rat brains and some MRIs and CAT scans of human brains.
• Nichol Cook discussed some clinical aspects of vision: myopia, macular degeneration, glaucoma, and cataracts.

After these presentations, we dividedinto groups so that each SFA student worked with about two TJRstudents. We had several sets of goggles which simulated the effectsof low acuity, glaucoma, cataracts, macular degeneration, andretinitous pigmentosa. Each TJR student took turns wearing thedifferent goggles while performing an everyday task such as readingthe bulletin board, walking down the hall, and getting a drink ofwater. They were all amazed how everyday activities become much moredifficult when there is some loss of vision!

Mandy Taylor watches two TJRstudents wearing goggles. The girl on the stairs has on a pair whichsimulate the reduced perceptual field of glacoma.

The Wednesday Visit:

• John Angell and Shannon Crouch started out with short discussions on color vision. John talked about the trichromatic and opponent-processes of vision and Shannon discussed color blindness.

At this point, we had the SFA and TJRstudents pair up again and do several color demonstrations at thedesks: color after-effects, Ishihara color plates to test for colorblindness, colored-yarn matching with and without a yellow lens infront of their eyes (which simulated the yellowing of the variablelens seen in the aging human eye), and viewing pictures whichsimulate visual sceens as perceived by people with different types ofcolorblindness.

Toni Ray works with a studentwho is matching colored yarn while looking through a yellowtransparency. Julie Terry is using the Ishihara color plates to testa students' colorvision.

• Erik Steen then gave a short discussion of depth perception and motion percpetion.
• Glenda Demaree presented information about the senses of touch, taste, and smell and how experience along with the latter two affect our food preferences.
• Mandy Taylor discussed the sense of hearing regarding both the basic structure of the auditory system and aspects of hearing loss.

After these presentations we first playeda tape which simulated the effects of different levels of highfrequency hearing loss. We stressed that life-long exposure to sound,especially loud sounds (like through walkman headphones) could leadto such losses in older age.

Finally, we again had the studentsexperience interactive demonstrations in groups. There was a motionafter-effect spiral, stereoscopes which had figural and random-dotstereograms, a book with red-green stereograms and other illusions,the Pulfrich effect, goggles which inverted and displaced vision, andan active touch demonstration that was done both with and withoutgloves (to simulate loss of agility and touch receptors often seenwith aging).

Erik Steen shows a group of TJRstudents the motion aftereffect demonstration.

A TJR student experiences theworld upsidedown by wearing inverting prismgoggles.

Glenda Demaree works with astudent who is wearing a glove to stimulate aging and who is tryingto recognize objects by only using the sense of touch.