The little people
Question: Sometimes when I am concentrating on someone who is talking to me,
they seem to become very small and appear as a miniature of their normal selves.
Everything else in my field of view is also miniaturised and I can control the
effect, which is great fun! This is more likely to happen if I鈥檓 tired. What is
happening and how common is this effect?
Answer: I experienced the same phenomenon as a young child. I can vividly
recall looking down into Trafalgar Square and seeing what I perceived to be
miniature people scurrying around. I would have been around three years old and
I pointed them out to my uncle and asked him if he could see them too. I was
told not to be silly and that the people we could see were all of normal
size.
As I remember, I put the reason that he couldn鈥檛 see them down to the fact
that he was a grown-up. It was obvious to me that only children could see these
little people. I didn鈥檛 experience the phenomenon very often, but I have a very
poignant memory of catching a glimpse of a little person disappearing into a
station. He seemed in an instant to jump from being a little person to normal
size and I knew as I saw him that I wouldn鈥檛 see any more little people, because
I was growing up. I have often thought of the experience, but I have never
spoken or written about it.
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Your question confirms my very unscientific conviction that I did see little
people as a child and only wish I could regain that magical outlook on the
world.
Ian Buchanan
Hook Norton, Oxfordshire
Answer: I have experienced this phenomenon for as long as I can remember, but
more when I was a child. I have often tried to explain it to people, even as it
was happening, but no one I met has experienced the same thing. How wonderful
that this happens to someone else.
Helen Ferrier
Norwich
The two letters above were selected from many others. It is clear that the
effect is quite common in childhood, even though most writers never knew that
other people shared their experience. We can find no scientific studies of the
phenomenon, but suspect that the letter below may provide an
别虫辫濒补苍补迟颈辞苍鈥抬诲
Answer: I have been familiar with this since I was a child, when it used to
frighten me. In bed at night the pictures on the wall would dwindle to postage
stamp size. This happened suddenly鈥攖hey did not zoom out gradually. It
happened without any loss of detail or resolution. As an adult I can make it
happen by concentrating in a certain way and this can enliven dull meetings at
work.
The mechanism may derive from the way that the brain corrects sizes. This is
the visual system that adjusts the perceived size of objects to the size you
know they should be. To demonstrate this, hold your left hand level with your
shoulder about 15 centimetres from your face, and fully extend your right arm.
Transfer your gaze from one hand to the other. Both will appear about the same
size, although the image of one on the retina will be three or four times as
large as the other. It is easy to show in the lab that size correction is done
by expanding the smaller image, and this accounts for several well-known optical
illusions.
Presumably the mechanism is mediated by particular cells in the visual
cortex, and if these tire or are inhibited by higher centres, everything in the
visual field will look small.
Galen Ives
Sheffield, South Yorkshire
The well-known Moon illusion provides another example of a distance scaling
effect. When the Moon is high in the sky and there are no distance cues it
appears small. When it sinks to the horizon and is seen through buildings,
trees, and so on, the brain scales it to these closer objects and it appears
much larger.
Similarly, when walking in the mountains in thick mist, which removes
distance cues, a towering mountain seen through the mist can turn into a nearby
rock a few paces later. The brain鈥檚 ability to adjust our sensation of size from
the real size of the image on our retina also explains why so many amateur
photographs are disappointing. The people we felt were nearby turn out to be
mere dots on our photograph.
Had Mr Buchanan photographed his view of Trafalgar Square, it might well have
looked much more like his childish view of it than his uncle鈥檚 adult perception.
The figures鈥� projection on the retina would really have been tiny; it is our
brains鈥� interpretation that makes them seem larger. Any of the many books by
Richard Gregory on illusions will provide further reading鈥擡d
This week鈥檚 question
Greek mystery: On several occasions I have seen this 70 metres by 9 metres
submerged barge in the Saronic Gulf close to Athens (above). I think it is
flexible because it seems to change shape from one sighting to another. What is
it? What does it carry? How does it work and why is it submerged? Is this sort
of barge peculiar to Greece? Can anyone help me find out what it is?
J. Robertson
Carlisle, Cumbria