So, if you are so inclined, please choose the option in the poll box below that most closely matches your initial impression: is A or B more like X?
NOTE: In the polling application I'm using for this experiment, merely selecting one of the radio buttons will count as a "vote" -- so please look carefully before choosing, because you can't take your vote back.
EDIT (2/22/08): I would actually greatly appreciate it if people would comment on their reasons for choosing either A or B. You might want to avoid looking at other people's comments before making your own choice so as to avoid unduly biasing your response, and you don't HAVE to state your reasoning in order to vote, but it would be cool if at least a few people offered their thoughts in this regard.
30 comments:
And I suppose the conclusion to be drawn from this is that aesthetically inclined people will match by colour while more mechanically oriented personages will match by shape?
I have to admit, I am completely befuddled about what this test is supposed to measure, and what the results are supposed to signify. Clarification, s'il vous plait?
I'm going to write a post once I have more poll votes explaining some of the theory behind this experiment, but one thing I can say for now is that it isn't supposed to "measure" a person's whole psychological makeup or cognitive style. It's more of a demonstration of subjectivity in prioritizing elements of an object when making a judgment.
I was actually thinking of adding a note saying that people should feel free to comment on their reasons for choosing A or B (but that they might want to avoid looking at other people's comments before making their own choice). I know that a lot of the time, quizzes like this try to make sweeping generalizations about how a person thinks based ONLY on their response to a binary (etc.) set of options. And a lot of the time, those generalizations fail to take into account the reasons behind a person's choice, which I actually think are significant data.
Thanks for the quick response :)
The only way I could think of writing this without looking at other peoples’ comments was by writing it in a word document first ^^ . Not that you can tell ;). I picked A. This was probably unconsciously influenced by the fact that at first I thought you were asking us to pick the letter we thought most closely resembled an X, A or B? Hmmm…how difficult to choose. And how dim of me. Oh, well. Anyway, like I said I picked A (I was intrigued to see that most people picked B…I never seem to be in the majority…), because I reasoned that people are going to recognize things first by their outline and resemblance to other objects rather than by their pattern. For example, if you have a door and a checkered patterned tablecloth, and then you also have a checkered patterned door (…eugh!), people will most likely identify the checkered-patterned door as a “door” before identifying it as “checkered-patterned”. At least, that’s how my brain works. It just occurred to me that this would be an interesting poll to use if some psychologist were studying the effects of someone’s native language on the thought-processing parts of someone’s brain. I’ve grown up in a predominately English world, but have recently forayed into a largely ASL world, with some Spanish, a lot of French thrown in, all the while still using English predominately, albeit in a rather francophone style. That probably doesn’t make a lot of sense if you’re not familiar with the grammatical set-up of either Romance Languages or ASL. In both, you state the noun and then the adjective, whereas in English you state the adjective and then the noun. ASL was derived from LSF, French Sign Language, so it has French grammar (though the signs of the language have long since parted ways). In the past I might’ve said B, but because I spend a lot more time in ASL and French (such that the sum of quantity is more or less on balance with my daily use of English). I would ultimately like to cease most of my use of English altogether (I find it to be a harsh-sounding and “unflowing” language). I just asked my Dad (a former communications professor) to weigh in on your poll, and he said that it’s a false dichotomy. Now that I think of it, he has a point.
P.S. I didn't mean to make it sound like I was assuming that I had more linguistic talent or experience than anyone else who might read this blog. But based on the data collected on the language knowledge of most americans, I do, so I just made that assumption. My apologies if you were aware of the setup of ASL/Romance languages. Hope it wasn't too boring.
kakalina: No, definitely not boring -- your comments are never boring! I definitely think language and perception can interact with each other and influence how people think about and describe certain things, though I definitely don't think language is necessary for thought to occur.
You said: For example, if you have a door and a checkered patterned tablecloth, and then you also have a checkered patterned door (…eugh!), people will most likely identify the checkered-patterned door as a “door” before identifying it as “checkered-patterned”.
My brain works opposite to that -- I would probably walk into the room and see "check patterns" before even being able to identify the door as a door and the tablecloth as a tablecloth! I tend to be incredibly clumsy and easily overwhelmed in new/unfamiliar settings because it takes me a long time to figure out where (and what) all the "macro-objects" are. When I go to a new place for the first time I sort of need to scout and scan all around it like a cat before I can really navigate effectively. The process of "resolving patterns and shapes and forms into familiar objects" is actually a semi-conscious one for me.
I was talking to some other people about this phenomenon once, and one thing that came up was that some of us in that conversation (including me) often tend to sit on floors and other surfaces even if furniture is available, because it's a lot easier to identify "flat surface a person can sit on" than it is to sort the environment into chunks like "couch", "chair", "floor", and "coffee table".
I remember in school I would often sit on the floor when the class watched filmstrips or movies, and sometimes I'd be the only person sitting on the floor even though it was pretty much the best seat in the house (in terms of actually being able to see the screen). Sometimes other people would join me (realizing that they'd probably be able to see better there as well) but few people seemed willing to initiate the floor-sitting (and the teachers didn't care, so it wasn't a case of there being a rule that people had to sit in actual chairs during films).
That was sort of a tangent, I suppose, but hopefully it makes some kind of sense in the context of this discussion.
I just asked my Dad (a former communications professor) to weigh in on your poll, and he said that it’s a false dichotomy. Now that I think of it, he has a point.
Well, I didn't actually mean for it to come across as a dichotomy at all, despite the fact that I offered only 2 options (if that makes any sense). I know that there are various different commonalities between X and A, and between X and B, and that a person could easily argue either way. But this poll isn't about trying to see how many people choose the "right" answer -- it's about opinions and impressions and subjective rationale. That's why I specified for people to go with their "first impression" rather than the impression they got from carefully considering the commonalities between the various images -- in real life, people make snap-judgment similarity comparisons all the time for practical reasons even when they fully realize that the options presented to them probably aren't too different.
For instance, when you walk into a public restroom with a bunch of stalls that all have toilet paper and are all about equally clean, you still have to choose one -- you're not going to stand there and say, "Well, there's absolutely no reason to choose one stall over the other, so I'm not going to pick any of them!" More likely, you (and not necessarily "you personally" here, I'm talking about the "generic you") will choose based on some factor like "this stall is closest to where I'm standing", or "this stall looks like it has more interesting graffiti to read". These characteristics obviously have nothing to do with whether the toilet stall is capable of performing its required function, but they may still influence your decision to an extent.
Erm how do I describe a split second decision? I just looked and the two images with the same inside pattern stood out for me (for me B is more like X)
englaborn: You said: I just looked and the two images with the same inside pattern stood out for me
I think you just described your split-second decision pretty well right there.
I picked A because it is "full" and represents the same shape regardless of the pattern filling the shape.
LOL *loved* your bathroom stall analogy, it was so funny!!!
A weird thing that I've noticed about me is that given the choice of sitting in a chair to my right or two my left, I always sit in the one that, when I'm in it, is on my left. I also sit on the left side of buses, the left side of cars, the left side of classes...you get the idea. I think it's because when all four of us (my family) sat in the car, I was in the back left and my brother was in the back right. Hmmm...
Wow, it never occured to me that people might have trouble adjusting to the visual impact of a new room...I just take it in in one glance. I also find it extremely difficult to separate one sound from another from, say, an orchestral recording or the auditory part of a movie (like, I wouldn't be able to separate voices like some people I know can, or I can't identify one instrument separately from another when they're playing together. I can't put sound and instrument or voice and person together very well either, and I don't think it has to do with being H/H). I also can't *stand* movie theaters because actors/actresses move their lips so little and usually are speaking in a stage whisper that is *impossible* to understand without normal hearing. I am forever tapping my freind's shoulder and asking what they are saying now.
Do you really select a bathroom stall based on the theory that the graffiti looks like a better read?
Interesting poll! I picked B because it is made of the same "stuff" as X.
I've been looking at gardening magazines lately, so I'll put it like this: to me, X looks like a square bed of flowers (petunias, maybe). B looks like a few more petunias planted somewhere around the house. A looks like a square cardboard box (perhaps the one that the petunias came from the store in, or maybe it's just a random box sitting around in the garage).
I picked B because it immediately jumped out at me--it actually took a while for me to see option A and recognize it.
I think this may have to do with the novelty of the pattern/texture, and my difficulties in processing background/foreground when the color red is involved. I find it extremely difficult to read text that is printed in red or is on a red background.
I might have chosen differently if a less novel texture/pattern had been chosen, and a different color had been chosen for the solid square.
I chose B because I felt that similarity of "texture", in this case, was less trivial than similarity of total shape.
I chose A because it's the same shape as X, B just doesn't feel like X at all to me, even with the same internal pattern the form of B feels completely different, its probably because the correlation of the internal parts toward the form of the object itself isn't the same, where as in A the form is the same, and even without the internal bits feels right (well.. more right at least).
I get the same reaction if I contemplate them as well. But it was my first reaction that I voted for..
So what do you think this data will reveal (or are you saving that for some other time, besides the fact that choices are subjective for different people)?
Interesting poll! I picked B because it is made of the same "stuff" as X.
Yeah. What she said.
Kind of like how if i had a chocolate bar, a chocolate egg, and a bar of soap, i'd classify the chocolate bar and the chocolate egg together, even if the bar of soap had exactly the same dimensions as the bar of chocolate...
IMHO, I chose B for the reason that it is a subsection of X.
I picked B because I looked at X, and saw a lot of colorful lines. Then I looked at B and saw a lot of colorful lines. X's border was broken up by the lines inside it as well, therefore I had to look closely to even realize that A is slightly similar. It is a good test, but I think the pattern is not a very good choice.
I picked B because it is made of the same "stuff" as X.
Thirded.
Oh, shoot. I misinterpreted the poll. I thought it was about the letters A, B, and X. If I'd realised that there was only one question in the poll, I'd have looked more closely at the diagram first, and answered B instead of A.
I think my reasons for instinctively choosing figure B as most closely resembling figure X may be expressed by the unconscious assumption that texture is a more salient property than shape. B is "made of" the squiggly pattern that X has, while A is merely square, a very common property.
I think too much about math to choose shape over form.
I picked A over B, instinctively and immediately and I'm very suspicous of post-facto rationalizations in general. But I think it had to do with seeing colors as somehow 'painted on' and shapes as less mutable.
IMO B looks more similar to X then A does, even though A and X are both squares. The patterns seem to me to be more immediately obvious on a visceral level then the shape.
-Taylor S, 21yo Aspie.
If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I'd pick B. X and A share their external appearance but differ in substance. X and B differ in appearance but agree in essence.
In general questions like this frustrate me no end because neither A nor B is "more like" X unless you specify what particular quality you are measuring. So my real answer is "none of the above". (Yes, I drove my teachers crazy...)
I had to think about it a minute. A is bounded - it has limits, a border giving it a definite shape. X is not bounded, so in that sense it doesn't have a shape. So comparing to A and B, either X or B could be a partial view of the same thing, but A is definitely different, and the shape doesn't enter into it.
I chose B. The bold color and hard lines of A seemed in contrast with the detail in X. B suggests the complexity of X which seemed more relevant.
First impression was that B is more like X. It seems to me that B has much more information that corresponds to X than A does. A has the entire outer shape but none of the complexity of the design or pattern while B retains at least a portion of it. So percentage wise, I'd have to say that B contains more of X than A does.
I selected B, focusing on the common content rather than the shapes (though I admit taking a few seconds to justify my selection, nundobtedly due to my history of taking tests that offered only right and wrong answers).
Looking at the images out of the corner of my eye as I was reading the introductory paragraphs:
B is more like X due to the colors and lines.
I wonder whether I would have chosen differently if there hadn't been the black outline around the A figure, and the color of the A figure had been light pinkish.
As I scrolled down to view the question, I could not fully see the shapes of all the objects involved--but I could see the color/pattern; and so 'B' was more like 'X' to me in the first instance. Perhaps you could try this again but put them all on the same line? Or put 'X' on a line by itself above, and 'A' and 'B' together on the next line. Would be interesting to see how the layout influences the results...
IMHO that this experiment is very simple and has a lot of compounding variables. It's hard to make any conclusion due to various possibilities on the response. Some people like shape over pattern, but the color red also plays a role. What if the color is changed to blue or black? what if the box has no black border..
My first response is A, but personally I like to be different with other people..so I click B instead.
Post a Comment