Ratman Era

The rationale of the current study was to replicate the study conducted by Bugelski and Alampay referring to the Ratman experiment focusing mainly on perceptual set and visual perception. Perceptual set is a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another and visual perception is one of the senses of the body which allows the brain to interpret visible light which gives the ability to see. The vast majority of people who are shown the different images of animals will most likely state the ambiguous card to be a rat. This is their perceptual set providing them with this response as they have previously seen images of animals so they therefore perceive the card also to be an animal. The method of this experiment is to study six students based on what they interpret the ambiguous figure. These students are grouped in three different conditions. They are selected by random stratified sampling, all the same age and must give consent to participate. These participants are randomly allocated to either condition one, two or control group three. Each student is tested individually and their response is recorded on a data sheet. In condition one, the students are shown four pictures of animals, condition two are shown four pictures of faces and control group are not shown any pictures apart from the ambiguous figure of the ratman. It was found in Bugelski and Alampay's study that a from 73-80% of the students who saw images of faces responded that they saw a man rather than a rat. Perceptual set and past experiences do play a major role in humans when it comes down to what the brain perceives images to be. The aim of the study is to find out whether past experiences with other figures influence how you perceive the ambiguous figure of the perceptual set. It was hypothesized that if you were shown the four pictures of animals, you will perceive the ambiguous card as a rat and if you were shown the four pictures of faces, you will perceive the ambiguous card as a man. The independent variable of the current study was the cards that are shown eg the animal pictures and the face pictures and the dependent variable of the current study was their answer, whether they saw a rat or a man.

Method:

1. All students were randomly allocated and provided their consent to be involved in the experiment.

2. Students drew slips out of a hat numbers either 1 (animal images),2 (face images) or 3 (no images) allocating what condition they were in.

3. Students in condition one were shown one after another, four different images of animals for 3 seconds each and asked to describe what they see, these responses were not recorded.

4. Participants from condition 1 were then shown the ambiguous card of the ratman and were asked to describe what they see, these responses were recorded.

5. Participants from condition 2 were then shown, one