In many scientific studies, mostly young students participate. This can make the results less applicable to the whole population. In this study, the Donders Citylab and the muZIEum worked together to involve a wider audience. The muZIEum is a museum with impact, where you experience what it is like to be blind or visually impaired. Here, the personal attention is key: a job for some, an experience for others. Visitors rely on expert guides in pitch darkness to discover what is possible when you ca not see. Participants in this experiment were people of different ages and genders, increasing the reliability of the results.
The experiment
Through this experiment, Marco Gandolfo studied how people perceive a person without expecting a person. Participants looked intently at a cross on a screen. While their attention was fully focused on this cross, a small human figure was briefly flashed upright or upside down in the image.
Because the figure's appearance had to be unexpected, only one measurement was taken per participant. This meant that many people were needed to draw reliable conclusions. Thanks to the collaboration with muZIEum, the researchers were able to quickly find a large and diverse group of participants.
Key findings
Gandolfo concluded that the human figure was seen more often when it was upright rather than upside down. He also found that older people were less likely to notice the figure. With every additional 10 years of age, the probability of perceiving the stimulus decreased by 10%.
In addition, a striking difference was found between men and women. Men were more likely to report that they had seen a stimulus even when it was not there. This suggests that men are less prone to ‘inattentional blindness’ and are more likely to say they perceived something. Yet this did not mean that they were more accurate in naming what they had seen. This difference seems to have to do not only with perception, but possibly also with how men and women respond to uncertainty in an experiment. This is another new insight.
Collaboration
The collaboration with muZIEum allowed the researchers to attract a wider audience. For the museum itself, this was a great opportunity to actively involve visitors in science. It shows how science and the public can reinforce each other.