When studying the phenomenon of detecting being stared at, there are many factors to consider. Like all other paranormal phenomenon, there has been excruciating research done on this subject, both to prove and to disprove its existence. Rupert Sheldrake, a well known believer in paranormal activity, has demonstrated in a series of experiments positive conclusions that could lead to the conclusion that it is not a mere artifact of pseudo randomization. Robert Baker and David Marks & John Colwell are skeptics, who have conducted similar experiments, who have claimed their results conclude in pseudo randomization.
Does the relative position of the starer make a difference in the ability to detect being stared at? In every experiment conducted by Sheldrake or the others, the starer was always positioned behind the staree. As long as the staree was preoccupied, such as in Robert Baker's experiment, the position of the starer shouldn't effectiveness of the staree's ability to "sense" stares. While maintaining a respectful distance to the subject, would they be able to sense being stared at without seeing that they're being stared at? We've all heard the stories of people locking eyes from across the room, love a first sight. Did one of the "lovers" sense the other from across the room? From personal experience, it seems more likely to get someone to look at you to feel stared at if you aren't placed directly being them.
In Baker's experiment, nine of thirty eight subjects could have been distracted or permitted to focus too much on the experiment am I being stared at, am I not. (Baker, 5) With activities such as eating, drinking, eating, watching television, or working at the computer, subjects can easily become distracted. Meaning, if the sensation of being stared at is not a strong one, the mind could still perceive it.
On the other hand, the 9 subjects who were observed while studying would be less likely to be distracted by a staring sensation (Baker). If it is not a strong sensation, the mind may be too preoccupied to be conscious of it. Therefore, if the staree is not "gifted" in detecting being stared at, a weak sensation during a "mind-consuming" activity, such as studying, could be easily ignored. When one's mind is fully occupied, for example, while studying, maybe the sensation if overshadowed by the mind's preoccupation. Unless this ability had been practiced or developed at some point in one's life then it could easily be ignored or over looked.
A video is put on, and in the beginning of this video your told to count how many times the people in the white shirts pass the ball. By the time the scene is over, most of the people watching the video have a number in their head. What these people missed was the gorilla walking through as they were so focused on counting the number of passes between the white team. Would you have noticed the gorilla? According to Cathy Davidson this is called attention blindness. As said by Davidson, "Attention blindness is the key to everything we do as individuals, from how we work in groups to what we value in our classrooms, at work, and in ourselves (Davidson, 2011, pg.4)." Davidson served as the vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke University helping to create the Program in Science and Information Studies and the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience. She also holds highly distinguished chairs in English and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke and has written a dozen different books. By the end of the introduction Davidson poses five different questions to the general population. Davidson's questions include, "Where do our patterns of attention come from? How can what we know about attention help us change how we teach and learn? How can the science of attention alter our ideas about how we test and what we measure? How can we work better with others with different skills and expertise in order to see what we're missing in a complicated and interdependent world? How does attention change as we age, and how can understanding the science of attention actually help us along the way? (Davidson, 2011, p.19-20)." Although Davidson hits many good points in Now You See It, overall the book isn't valid. She doesn't exactly provide answers ...
Sheldrake proposes that the concept of the mind existing outside of the body can be proved by a simple scientific experiment. The experiment is simply determining whether or not people can sense or know someone is staring at them with their backs turned away. Sheldrake conducted his own experiments using this method and found that “The overall results from ten different experiments (involving more than 120 subjects) were 1,858 correct guesses as against 1,638 incorrect guesses; in other words 53.1 percent of the guesses were correct, 3.1 percent above the chance level of 50 percent.” (Sheldrake, Seven Experiments 119) How significant is this number? To the average person this seems like a rather insignificant difference, but Sheldrake sees this as “highly significant statistically” (Sheldrake, Seven Experiments 119)
In the editorial cartoon, Our Eyes Secure Your Safety, is dealing with giving up rights and freedoms. The cartoonist has presented the perspective that rejecting collectivism can be ineffective, which is shown by people walking around surrounded by video surveillance. The author uses irony of large eyes in the sky with big bold letters that states the quote our eyes secure individuals' safety to show the ideas presented on portraying negative notion on the subject of which is surrendering our rights and freedoms for more collective security; he/she also stresses the idea of individualism. The individualist view of a society without high government involvement was furthermore illustrated in the source by the idea of all the eyes, gloominess
...at she spoke with many expert starees and discovered that they are much more comfortable with staring exchanges than actual staters are. The reason for that of course, is that they have so much more experience with the staring relationship, so now they themselves actually end up directing the staring relationship in many cases and leading it to a productive end that they want to occur giving the staree power.
Processing capacity is a very broad and flexible category according to many researchers. In fact, the quote above mentioned suggests that we often fail to notice things that happen just in front of us (unexpected events that are often salient) either because we were completely absorbed by something else or because we had so many things to do at the same time that we couldn’t pay attention to it. We have all at least once failed to see a friend who was waving at us while eating in the cafeteria or walking in a crowded street. The primary question that we should ask ourselves is: how many things can we attend at the same time? The truth is that we didn’t perceive this friend because of a phenomenon called “inattentional blindness”. The problem is that the richness of our visual experience leads us to believe that our visual representation will include and preserve the same amount of detail (Levin et al 2000). In this paper we’ll see the different theories of inattentional blindness, and the classical theories demonstrating this paradigm.
The first experiment involved shaking hands with strangers while introducing myself to them and standing too close to them while asking a question. And the second social experiment was to stare at random strangers for an unusually longer period of time.
Treisman, A. (1964). Monitoring and storage of irrelevant messages in selective attention. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behaviour, 3(6): 449-459.
Macleod and Mathews (1991) induced attentional biases within a laboratory setting to determine that a ca...
Though the experiment shows that attention is vital for change detection, we should consider the size/ impact of the change in the environment. If the change to an environment is small, would it result in the change being detected? Do providing little clues draw attention effectively to where the change is being made? In support of this argument, Rensink (1997) showed that even with small clues, if the clue is not directed properly then detecting change will not have an effect. A proposal of Rensink is that the absence of attention will cause visual contents to be missed. On the other hand, Simon and Levin (1998) suggest that a person could miss things happening in their environment if his or her attention is occupied by something
I sit at a table, facing a partitioned wall; and I’m looking at a lighted coal-oil lamp which stands on the table close to the wall. I am entirely focused on the lamp, and light. (102)
Attention is defined as “notice taken of someone or something; the regarding of someone or something as interesting or important”.
In the process of human infants’ development, infants start to learn how to communicate with the others at the surprising early age, for example: Newborns can follow objects to make saccades to peripheral targets (Farroni et al., 2004);Infants’ responding eye gaze behaviour increase constantly since two months old (Scaife & Bruner, 1975); Cooper and Aslin pointed out that this preference showed up as early as the infants were one month old in 1990. Infants not only can respond to eye contact, vocal cues also are used for gaining more reference information during a communication, particularly when the speech is conducted forward to the infants. It had been reported in many studies that infants show more preference to infant-directed communication
Eye contact can determine a person’s attitude and true feelings. People use eye contact in social situations to determine how and what a person is truly feeling. The amount of distance a person is from another along with the amount of eye contact used, can change the attraction level between two individual. This attraction can change the attitude of both parties towards each other (Goldman, 1980).
...ry, it is easy to notice how people need different things, and require alternate ways of studying. You notice people’s emotions and how they react to their surroundings. Some people need silence, some need music, some need space, some need distraction and some people just do it to look good.