I don't know how to cook but I do love watching cooking shows. I love changing the channel to the Food Network, Discovery Travel and Living Channel, the Lifestyle Channel, and the Asian Food Network. I love watching shows like Man vs. Food, Iron Chef, and Cake Boss. One of my favorite cooking shows (that unfortunately did not pick up after a second season) was Junior MasterChef Australia. It is a cooking game show for children aged 8 to 12. Each episode, the children had to cook food and the judges rated them and eliminated those who did not make the cut. One of my favorite episodes in season 1 was when the children were asked to taste a pizza and name as much ingredients in the pizza as they can. Now, let's pretend that we're watching the episode from a black and white television and we paused it to this scene below.
If you looked at the picture for only 27 ms, would you be able to understand what was happening in the photo? I don't think so. According to research, however, it is possible to tell the gist of the scene - the general description - in just 500 ms (Goldstein, 2010). So if you look at it for only 27 ms, you would probably only describe seeing lines. If you looked at the picture for 40 ms, you would probably describe seeing a diagonal, rectangular shape. If you looked at it for 67 ms, you would probably be able to describe seeing the children. At 500 ms, you would probably be able to describe seeing the huge pizza with children around it - looking like they're about to eat it.
But what about if the picture was colored? Since televisions now are colored, of course it is more likely that you'll watch the episode in full color. A study done by Castelhano and Henderson (2008) shows that color has an effect on the activation of scene gist. The detection of the gist of the scene of an image was faster when images were colored. Similarly, the gist of blurred scenes were easily activated when the blurred image was colored. However, it was found that when hues of the color were changed, it could activate an incorrect scene gist.
So if I showed you the colored picture above above, you could probably activate the scene gist faster than the black and white picture I showed earlier. You could probably tell me about the huge pizza faster.
And if I showed you the blurred colored picture above, you could also activate the scene gist faster than the black and white picture.
However, if I showed you the different hues above, you could activate an incorrect scene gist. You might not be able to recognize the pizza right away nor the children. You might even mistake them for aliens - who knows.
So now, I am quite thankful that my television is colored. Because the scenes move quite fast in television, I get to activate the scene gist faster. Imagine how life was when television was still black and white. I'm glad everything's technicolor now. Also, I'm hoping that our television doesn't get broken so that the colors of the shows I'm watching don't get messed up. This is so that I can understand what is happening in the scenes as well as enjoy the delicious-looking food on tv.
-Samantha Rae M. Sanchez-
References:
Castelhano, M. S., & Henderson, J. M. (2008). The influence of color on the perception of scene gist. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34(3), pp. 660-675.
Goldstein, E.B. (2010). Sensation and perception (8th ed). Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.
Green Finger Hot Chile Pepper. Retrieved from http://www.specialtyproduce.com/index.php?item=3013.
Photo Source:
http://cdn.static.ovimg.com/episode/3002651.jpg
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