Paper-and-pencil tasks showed that many university students believed that when laterally approaching a mirror, they would see a reflection in the mirror before it was geometrically possible. Participants failed to adequately factor in the observer's location in the room. However, when asked about the behavior of a ray of light, participants knew about the law of reflection. No differences between psychology and physics students were detected, suggesting that the phenomenon is widespread and refractory to training. The findings were replicated with observers making judgments about image locations in a real room using a pretend mirror. Possible heuristics about mirror reflection that might explain the data are discussed. Naive optics is a promising venue to further knowledge of how observers understand basic laws of physics.

Effective photojournalism provokes an emotional reaction and leaves a lasting impression upon the viewer. Striking and memorable images are often said to possess 'impact'. Within cognitive neuroscience memorable emotional images evoke a greater amygdala response. Research to date has focused on arousal as a causative factor, while the contribution of appraisal dimensions relating to salience of an item, goal relevance, or impact are yet to be addressed. We explored how differences in ratings of impact influenced amygdala activity to negative emotional images matched for valence, arousal and other factors. Increased amygdala activation was found to high impact when compared to neutral images, or high impact when compared to low impact images (matched for arousal). Our findings demonstrate that the amygdala response to emotional stimuli is not a function of arousal (or valence) alone and accord more with the proposal that the amygdala responds to the significance or relevance of an event.

No abstract