Chapter 1. Seeing the World Upside Down

Short Description

Tracy, a 29-year-old psychology student from England, will wear glasses that turn the world upside down for one week.

Long Description

Tracy, a 29-year-old psychology student from England, will wear glasses that turn the world upside down for one week. Archival footage of psychologists’ past efforts at wearing inverting goggles suggests that researchers have long wondered whether the brain rewires itself so that the inverted world is eventually seen as normal.

Over the week that she wears the distorting glasses, Tracy undergoes a series of tests that assess changes in her perceptions as well as her ability to adapt her actions to a distorted world. An important question is whether she will eventually see her visual world as normal.

In viewing the world through Tracy’s glasses we see that her initial experience is indeed disorienting. As the week progresses she reports that navigating the upside-down world is getting easier. She pours hot water into a cup and walking comes more naturally. On the fifth day, Tracey reports having had strange dreams of people she had encountered the previous day. She recognizes them even though they are seen upside down.

Over the seven days Tracy gradually adapts to her upside down world. To her, however, it is not always clear whether she perceives people and objects accurately. Tests indicate that certain abilities, such as moving blocks around on a table top, are much improved. On the other hand, she still has great difficulty picking up an object from the investigator’s hand when it is held in different locations. It would be incorrect to say that Tracy has converted her strange world to a “normal” view. Clearly, an inverted world requires many separate adaptations and, perhaps over time, they would successfully unify. On removing the glasses after seven days, Tracy again reports some disorientation.

Questions