What is Peripheral Vision

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What is Peripheral Vision?

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This site is about a conflict of human physiology that shaped history but was undetected until the 1960's.

In the entire history of man on the planet Earth this phenomenon was discovered only once.

It caused mental breaks for office workers.

You will find this material hard to believe.

This phenomenon is explained in first semester psychology lectures where students don't believe it either.

For that reason I wrote a demonstration that will allow you to experience the phenomenon.

The Everquest Connection page has the explanation and assumes you have not taken basic psychology.

The solution for this problem was the office Cubicle.

This site argues that the this phenomenon causes College Suicides and Missing Students.

The phenomenon causes mental events around the world, Chaco Canyon.

If you use computers in unprotected workspace such as homes, dorms, student apartments, and small business offices read ...Prevention... at the bottom of most pages.

Long term exposure can cause severely altered mental states. Qi Gong Kundalini Yoga

If you are visiting the site as part of a school project send the person responsible for controlling violence at your school to this site.

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What is Peripheral Vision ?

There are many definitions for peripheral vision in psychology. Non-Macular vision, non-foveal vision, and ambient vision are all peripheral vision.

The area of peripheral vision discussed on this site is just past the periphery of conscious vision on either side of the head. You may consider this as a thin cone wrapping around the normal cone of conscious vision.

This area of vision operates subliminally. No one is aware of the subliminal operation until movement is detected and a peripheral vision reflex happens.

You may be familiar with the phrase, 'catching something out of the corner of your eye.' When that happens you have experienced a peripheral vision reflex. Both the human vision startle reflex as well as weaker reflexes are derived through peripheral vision. Only movement is detected so stationary objects in this area of peripheral vision are invisible.

Peripheral Vision is monocular, each eye sees a different field rather than the overlapping fields of conscious sight.

The speed of approach for moving objects must be determined by increasing size or by the speed at which the image crosses the retina.

Proximity is also determined by increasing size and by the amount of space, number of rods, covered by the moving image. This monocular system to evaluate movement can make mistakes of perception so that peripheral vision reflexes are created when the situation would not warrant it.

An area of the retina made up of mostly rods supplies the signal to the brain, therefore, Peripheral Vision is black and white vision.

There are experiments now on-line, which demonstrate some color vision in peripheral vision but they made no reference to Subliminal Peripheral Vision. In earlier searches I found experiments done by college students which demonstrated that there was a high error rate when colored cards were slipped into peripheral vision from behind. (If there sites are still up I will cite the URL.)

Although sound is sensory adaptable, vision is not. Micro movements of the eye constantly refresh sensor cells on rods and cones. This prevents chemical depletion of sensor cells.

Although you can ignore objects or movement in your vision field you cannot stop seeing them This is because it is possible to attach different levels of attention or 'notice' to objects in your vision field.

Humans can 'habituate to extinction notice taken of moving objects in peripheral vision.' This means you can see something in peripheral vision and not have it recorded by your conscious mind. Weak peripheral vision reflexes can be overridden. Habituation causes the stimulus to fade from attention.

Conscious sight has depth perception and persistence of vision. Peripheral vision does not, except for the ‘apparent size' illusion and/or the rate of movement the illusion may create. The flicker fusion rate is the point at which flicker is no longer detectable. This varies from person to person. These two Wikipedia articles discuss this. They are incomplete and have no citation references.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold

This has implications for early computer games that were played using a Television as the viewing monitor. The scan rate for Television is determined by the sixty cycle power line frequency. Alternating frame lines are scanned every sixtieth of a second. A full frame is drawn every thirtieth of a second. This interlacing smoothes the "page flipping" effect. I still do not have a definitive article on this but I believe it means that flicker from a TV can be detected in Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

If two persons play these TV monitor games, dual controller, the "off player" can be exposed to stimulation in Subliminal Peripheral Vision if they turn their head while not controlling play. As the head is turned back toward the TV the flicker appears to approach from behind providing stimulus to create a Peripheral Vision Reflex. The psychology involved is explained on the Everquest Connection page.

There is some information that the preteen suicide rate began to rise about the time of the introduction of the cartridge computer games, Atari, Commodore, Sega, and others.

There is no long term memory normally associated with peripheral vision. There are news releases of experiments posted on the Internet which indirectly reveal this.

Peripheral vision reflexes are created at a level in the brain below thought, reason, and consciousness. For this reason when you choose to ignore movement that is distracting to you and that is positioned in your Subliminal Peripheral Vision you lose track of it.

Conflict of Physiology

The conflict of our physiology explored on this site is that although you can ignore peripheral vision reflexes, you cannot stop seeing the movement that causes them. You cannot tell your brain to stop subliminally detecting that movement and attempting to force the reflex.

Peripheral Vision Reflexes

Peripheral vision reflexes are an evolutionarily developed, retained, warning system. For early man or pre-humans to survive they needed a system to warn them of predators approaching from behind. To function it must work all the time no matter what you are doing. If you had the ability to turn the brain system off at will, it could not warn you in critical situations.

The act of concentrating on something at arm's length, in your hand for instance, causes physiological changes in the eye.

When you focus on a close object your eye accommodates by changing the shape of the lens. This shape-change expands the area covered by Subliminal Peripheral Vision.

Plitz's reflex, or Attention Reflex, changes the size of your pupil. This floods the retina with ambient light desensitizing the rods so that only a large movement close by will trigger a reflex.

M and P Pathways

Although all signals from the retina travel on the optic nerve there are actually two pathways. They route the signals from conscious sight and peripheral vision to different parts of the brain. This allows humans to have two vision systems running at the same time. The pathway from peripheral vision is subliminally observed.

http://www.vestibular.org/computer.html

Links

I recommend this site. But you will have to browse several pages.

"Early in evolution, human ancestors had only peripheral vision. The role of this early vision system (still preserved in our eyes) was to detect motion and set off protective reflexes."

http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm

Peripheral vision Lego tester

Adobe file with tester construction and data results sample

http://www.edex.com.au/lego/support/activities/032_peripheral_vision.pdf

Nightwalking

"In The Book of Five Rings, Miyamoto Musashi, the legendary swordsman of 16th century Japan, implies that he fought his greatest duels with his eyes crossed, and goes into considerable detail about developing and using this strange abitlity."

The method suggested to engage peripheral vision is to suspend an object from the bill of a baseball cap and practice staring at it rather than looking straight ahead as we all normally do.

The site has a page on the physiology of the eye and sight. It describes the normal field of vision.

http://www.navaching.com/hawkeen/nwalk.html#Anchor-The-59125

Institute for Innovative Blind Navigation

Don't let the site name put you off. This site has several pages which explain sight and how the brain deals with two vision systems.

http://www.wayfinding.net/index.htm

This page has the vision material. http://www.wayfinding.net/vsionsys.htm#four

Speed Reading (peripheral vision)

http://www.ababasoft.com/wider_eye_span/

Vision, is a set of brain level subsystems

This page explains the M & P pathways and vision processing.

http://www.wayfinding.net/visanal.htm

The Red Myth

Color in Vision

http://stlplaces.com/night_vision.html

University of Missouri

The first paragraph on this page refers to psychological factors effecting pupil dilation.

"Interestingly, the pupil/iris combination also changes in response to psychological factors. One sign of activation of the sympathetic nervous system, which is a system important in arousal, fight, and flight, is dilated pupils. For example, sexual interest results in pupil dilation. (This piece of information may come in handy some time.)"

http://web.umr.edu/~psyworld/eye.htm

University of Utah

John Moran Eye Center -- Anatomy

http://webvision.med.utah.edu/

Kimball's Biology Pages

A simple explanation of the eye and sight.

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html

Understanding Human Vision

This site deals with color.

http://www.pitir.com/pentile/Human_Vision.html

Vision and the Brain

Block diagrams of vision paths through the brain explain the M and P channels.

http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/i/i_02/i_02_cr/i_02_cr_vis/i_02_cr_vis.html#2

Study Notes Vision

http://www.utmed.com/studynotes/neuro/VisualProcessing.pdf

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Prevention: This section is now repeated at the bottom of most pages.

The rare occurrence of the injury establishes that is difficult to create enough exposure to cause an injury. But when it does happen the consequences are serious, possibly fatal.

Our personal experience was intermittent human traffic during eight-hour workdays for thirty calendar days.

If you have a tower CPU mount it under your desk. That's the way they position it in a cubicle. The hard drive busy light is about the height of your low peripheral vision if you put the tower on the desk. Desktop reading of text or writing notes beside the keyboard on the side of the monitor away from the tower makes the blinking hard drive busy light appear to approach from behind when you turn to view the screen again.

If you have a computer work station/desk in which you turn ninety degrees to write or do other non computer work, turn off the monitor when you turn aside. Remove screen savers in this instance. The movement, animation for example, in your screensaver, two-dimensional movement, might well be detected by your peripheral vision at close range. Alternately cover the monitor screen.

All home, apartment, or dorm computer workstations are in unprotected workspace. To change that put the computer in a quiet room with no possible movement. If that is not possible in a dorm or apartment position the computer so that your peripheral vision can see only stationary walls as you use the computer in a busy room. In Cubicles and 'Systems Furniture' these protective features are achieved with peripheral vision blocking panels and corner seating positions. It is called 'Cubicle Level Protection.'

If you use computer or CD-ROM games for many hours day after day, the game playing position should follow the same rules as the computer workstation. Battery operated games will not run long enough on a single rechargeable battery to cause a risk for SPVP.

Although a laptop does not have a visible blinking light in peripheral vision the same rules apply to your work position. There should not be human traffic moving to you from behind. There should be nothing behind you, which could enter your subliminal peripheral vision field as you turn your head while working at the laptop and be mistaken for threat movement.

Only movement coming from behind you into your Subliminal Peripheral Vision can cause a peripheral vision reflex. If the movement source approaches you from ahead then enters your Subliminal Peripheral Vision from conscious sight there can be no peripheral vision reflex.

Repeated for Emphasis:

A single session or rare sessions will not cause this problem.

It is the same day after day long hours of play or computer use with detectable movement in ‘Subliminal Peripheral Vision,’ which would form the basis of a risk for SPVP injury.

Exposure can be cumulative

The brain’s detection system only evaluates movement. There is little recognition of the nature of the object in peripheral vision. If you have several hours exposure from human traffic at the library, while reading at an open table or seated in a reading room chair, followed by long hours watching TV with a critically misplaced ceiling fan sweeping detectable shadows around the room, the combination of those two behaviors might cause the problem. The suggestion is that either activity alone would not consume enough exposure time even if the critical movement is present.

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