Biopsychology and Perceptions- Choice 2 Give your opinion

In my spare time I enjoy golfing. One of the challenges with golf is you need to determine a distance to the pin and choose a club that will get you as close as possible. Sounds simple, however when you add additional objects around the target such as sand bunkers, trees, high grass ect. It becomes difficult to accurately identify a distance. I recall a time where I perceived 135 yard was the distance needed, come to find out I was wrong as my shot landed 40 yards further that my target!

I believe there are two reasons responsible for this misperception of distance. First, it was interesting to learn that the brain process objects by the amount of light that the object absorbs and how much light the object deflects. Knowing this, the part of the eye which allows light to enter is the pupil.(Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy, & Woolf, 2014, p. 133). In conjunction with the pupil, the lens of the eye bends the light that the pupil receives as it zones in on the image we are focusing on. Through this accommodation occurs. Accommodation is the changing of the shape of the lens to focus on objects near or far (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy, & Woolf, 2014, p. 134). Therefore I believe I had a difficult time adjusting my lens due to the other objects in the surrounding area of my target.

The second reason I believe this happened was depth perception. According to our text; depth perception is the ability to judge distance and three-dimensional relations (Lilienfeld, Lynn, Namy, & Woolf, 2014, p. 154). We use binocular cues to help perceive depth. Much like the moon illusion, I falsely associated the depth (distance) of the target based on the surrounding items that I associated to be far away.

Work Cited:

Lilienfeld, S. O., Lynn, S. J., Namy, L. L., & Woolf, N. J. (2014). Psychology from inquiry to understanding. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.