A markedly penetrating report, involving fingers, tongues, and holes: “Differences in the oral size illusions produced by cross-modality matching of peg and hole stimuli by the tongue and fingers in humans,” Bruce Melvin and Robin Orchardson, Archives of Oral Biology, vol. 46, no. 3, March 2001, pp. 209-13. The authors, at the University of Glasgow, […]
Tag: Perception
Perception of the chilled groceries foodscape, with and without refrigerator doors
The researchers state their worry bluntly: “The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an understanding of how consumers behave and what they perceive when shopping chilled groceries from cabinets with doors and without doors in the supermarket.” Sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch are all perception tools that help aid the decision making […]
Upside-down crotch-peeping tourists in Japan
“The observatory crotch peep platform is being installed, a lot of tourists to experience the crotch peeping.” — one highlight from NHK Zero’s TV report about the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize winners. The image you see here, from the TV program, shows how people have been influenced by the winner of the 2016 Ig Nobel Prize […]
Can rodents conceive hyperbolic spaces?
This new study is an adventure in understanding understanding: “Can Rodents Conceive Hyperbolic Spaces?” Eugenio Urdapilleta, Francesca Troiani, Federico Stella, Alessandro Treves, arXiv1502.02435, February 9, 2015. Thanks to Mason Porter for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at SISSA in Trieste, Italy, explain: “The grid cells discovered in the rodent medial entorhinal cortex have been […]
Reduced Pleasant Touch Appraisal in the Presence of a Disgusting Odor
Here, a study about a disgusting odor, with a distinct touch: “Reduced Pleasant Touch Appraisal in the Presence of a Disgusting Odor,” Ilona Croy [pictured here], Silvia D’Angelo, Håkan Olausson, PLoS One, epub March 24, 2014. (Thanks to investigator Carmen Nobel for bringing this to our attention.) The authors, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, […]
Wavelengths you don’t see, wavelengths you don’t hear…
Abstruse Goose peruses the limits of direct perception: (HT Vince Abbott)
A study of domestic cat meows, to be presented in Dublin
The world’s ongoing research effort to understand cat meows will center, for a shining moment in May, in Dublin, Ireland.The assembled delegates will there “A Study of Human Perception of Intonation in Domestic Cat Meows,” Susanne Schötz [pictured here, above] and Joost van de Weijer [pictured here, below], [paper to be presented at the conference] Proceedings […]
A Rorschach Test
Look at this picture. What do you see? Some may see a portrait of Herman Rorschach, the inventor of the Rorschach Test. Others may see a pair of vases. Still others may see a circuit diagram for the Pentium II processor. A minority of people report seeing a collection of black dots on a white […]
Improbable on Science Friday today: upside-down vision
I’m going to be on NPR’s Science Friday program today. We’ll talk about the series of experiments that forced people to see the world upside down, left-right reversed, and other unusual ways. This segment will be at the start of hour 2 of the program. Here’s film from that experiment:
Tastes Like Chicken
Rocketboom reports on Joe Staton’s study “Tastes Like Chicken, which was published in volume 4, number 4 (in 1998) of the Annals of Improbable Research: Staton is a professor at the University of South Carolina. A chart from his study is reproduced below. You can find a pdf of the entire article here. BONUS: The study is cited […]