Page 169 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

Perception 173

Figure 7.31
The Ames room.

doors on the other side of the street. When shooting the scenes of the westerns,
directors position male actors on the side of the street with small doors. This
makes them look bigger. Female actors, on the other hand, get filmed on the
other side of the street, against the background of large doors, which makes
them look petite.
When past experience does not give you knowledge of what familiar objects
look like at extreme distances, size constancy may break down. You have ex-
perienced this problem if you have looked down at people from the top of a
skyscraper and thought that they resembled ants. Consider, also, the experi-
ence of a man named Kenge of the equatorial Africa Pygmy culture. Kenge had
lived in dense tropical forests all his life. He had occasion, one day, to travel by
car for the first time across an open plain with anthropologist Colin Turnbull.
Later, Turnbull described Kenge’s reactions.
Kenge looked over the plains and down to where a herd of about a
hundred buffalo were grazing some miles away. He asked me what kind
of insects they were, and I told him they were buffalo, twice as big as the
forest buffalo known to him. He laughed loudly and told me not to tell such
stupid stories, and asked me again what kind of insects they were. He then
talked to himself, for want of more intelligent company, and tried to liken
the buffalo to the various beetles and ants with which he was familiar.
He was still doing this when we got into the car and drove down to
where the animals were grazing. He watched them getting larger and