An honorarium is often a small payment for services that might otherwise be done for free or for a much larger amount. Think of it as a token payment of appreciation.
Past experience with hybrid classes has shown that on the average 2 assignments a week is about right for most students. The problem is that there are many additional assignments that would enrich your learning in this class. I don't necessarily like the concept of extra credit (if you ask I'll be happy to tell you why) and I can't afford to pay you too much for doing these additional assignments because many students won't be able to find the time resources to do them and I don't want to blow out the grade curve.
So what I am willing to do is offer an honorarium as a token of my appreciation for doing these additional assignments. They will typically be worth 2 points. If you like you can incorporate this assignment into your Topical Blog Assignment by listing it as one of your references (in this case it is OK to 'double-dip').
For this week's honorarium assignment I would like you to go to the following site and read through the introduction and the instructions for the online lab experiment.
http://people.usd.edu/~schieber/coglab/BlindSpot.html
IMPORTANT: When you click on the button at the bottom of the page to "RUN THE EXPERIMENT" you may be asked to log in. If you log in as GUEST you should be able to get in. You will also need a computer with up to date Java plug-ins.
The experiment takes about 15 minutes - perceptually it seems like forever : -) but don't give up and don't just start clicking on buttons to get it over with because we want the data it provides you when you are done.
After all that, since most of the work was doing the assignment. For this blog post, just say I did the experiment and briefly discuss your experience.Once you are done with your post make list of the terms and terminology you used in your post.
I did this experiment.
I found it rather boring and repetitive. I felt like for a lot of them the line length was the same and it was rather frustrating.
These studies are repetitive because it is systematically testings spots in your visual field to see if you can detect them...
How did you data come out? Did you see how big the area of your fovea is where you can't see anything? Isn't that amazing though?
The experience was pretty fun, actually. The only problem I had with it was that I got in a pattern of hitting "1", so when I didn't see the dot, I habitually hit "1" on accident.
This type of thing happens, probably because the button pressing or order of pressing isn't randomly ordered from trial to trial.
Man, that blind spot stuff blows my mind! I thought this was so cool! I liked it alot. Although I couldn't get my results for some reason it wouldn't load on my computer. Very cool though!
People are always fascinated that their brain fills in a portion of the visual field that we can not see. It is cool.
This experiment was so amusing to me it didn't feel like it took very long! When a dot showed up that was in my blind spot I tried as hard as I could to find it but I just couldn’t, it was pretty frustrating! It was extremely interesting and I could map a certain area of my vision that had a blind spot.
Good work!
I thought the experience was pretty cool. I did find it hard to keep fixated on the specific point without "cheating." I think that the temptatin to see the dot could have influenced my results. I also could see the dot sometimes but it was blurry, which I counted as seeing the dot.
Fixate, always fixate, it seems hard, but that's how the data comes out accurate! Glad you noticed your tendency to deviate from fixation. A good way to avoid this is with an eyetracker. If you break fixation the trial starts over, so fixating becomes the only way to finish the experiment! Good work.
I liked this one because it was a yes or no question, do you see the dot or not. Much easier than the last one. My blind spot was a backwards L shape with a diagonal line through the middle. Cool!
Nice, you got to see your data. Always more reinforcing to see the results after doing the experiment.
For this experiment I found it to be a bit more challenging. In my mind I knew there was always a dot on the screen so that may have affected my results. I also found myself always hitting the “1.” You really have to concentrate while doing this experiment. After I was finished I found my results to be interesting. For my right eye my blind spot seemed to match the typical right eye that was shown on the experiment.
Yes, inhibiting the pre-potent response is difficult in certain tasks. The attention paid to the task itself can get taxing. Good job hanging in there and getting the data!
I enjoyed this experiment a lot more than the previous one! It was still fairly tedious, but you get an idea of the general location of your blind spot as you go so it gets a bit easier. It's hard to believe just how massive a portion of our vision gets "filled in" by the brain!
Definately gives you a sense of how big the spot is when you do this kind of experiment. When you do those intro to psych book demos, you're like, ok thats cool, but this actual experiment maps it out for you if you provide the response based on your perception .
After doing the experiment I thought it was very unique to test your perception! The blind spot for my right eye was pretty much the same shown on the map in the experiment. I kept telling myself to concentrate on the dot.