July 5, 2018
Many argue such a thing as an “educated eye” exists and makes for being a better eye witness, a better referee, a better chess player or better at judging dogs at dog shows. True or false?
In the courtrooms, for example, judges and juries are especially likely to accept the witness’s report as accurate if the witness is a police officer. It is believed that police have “educated eyes,” with the result that they can recognize faces that they viewed only briefly or at a considerable distance or in the dark after years of night shifts.
On the one hand, this ignores that there are optical properties of the eyeball and functional properties of the photoreceptors which are the same for all of us and don’t change or improve with use for any particular profession. All of us simply can’t see very well in the dark or at far distances.
At a different level, though, it is possible to have an “educated eye”—or, more precisely, to be more observant and more discerning than other people.
For example, when looking at a complex, fast-moving crime scene, police officers are more likely to focus their attention on details that will matter for the investigation—and so will likely see (and remember) more of the perpetrator’s actions (although, ironically, this means they’ll see less of what’s happening elsewhere in the scene).
In the same way, referees and umpires in professional sports know exactly what to focus on during a game. As a result, they’ll see things that ordinary observers would miss. (Fans at the FIFA World Cup in Russia right now might disagree, but trust me.)
The mechanisms are similar to what I described yesterday for auditory input: expectation guides your attention and your ability to interpret or parse a scene. For visual inputs you can only see detail that is landing on your foveas; what lands on your foveas depends on where exactly you’re pointing your eyes; and movements of the eyes (pointing them first here and then there) turn out to be relatively slow. As a result, knowledge about where to look has an immense impact on what you’ll be able to see.
It’s also true that experience can help you to see certain patterns that the rest of us miss. Consider the dog experts who serve as judges at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. These experts are sensitive to each dog’s overall form, and not just the shape of the front legs, the chest, the ears, and so on, with the result that they can make more discerning assessments than an ordinary dog-lover could.
Although all of us can enjoy one of the funniest movies ever made, dogs and all –
Experience can also help you to see (or hear or feel) certain combinations that are especially important or informative. One prominent example involves experienced firefighters who sometimes have an eerie ability to judge when a floor is about to collapse—allowing these professionals to evacuate a building in time, saving their lives and others’. What explains this perception? The answer may be a combination of feeling an especially high temperature and hearing relative quiet — a combination that signals a ferocious fire burning underneath them, hidden under the floor that they’re standing on.
In short, then, people can have “educated eyes” (or ears or noses or palates). This “education” can’t change the basic biological properties of your sense organs. But knowledge and experience can certainly help you to see things that others overlook, to detect patterns that are largely invisible to other people.
