The persistence of a misconception about vision after educational interventions

Abstract

Children and adults, like many ancient philosophers, believe that seeing involves emissions from the eye. Several experiments tested the strength of these "extramission" beliefs to determine whether they, like other scientific misconceptions, are resistant to educational experiences. Traditional college-level education had little impact. Presenting a simplified lesson, stressing visual input, and a lesson directly counteracting the vision misconception had an impact, but for older participants the effect was evident only on short-term tests. Despite some gain due to learning, overall the results demonstrated the robustness of extramission beliefs.

Fundamentally misunderstanding visual perception: Adults' belief in visual emissions.

“…On trials that included these favorite choices, the percentage of extramission responses ranged from 41% to 67% (the greater the number of preferred choices offered, the greater the frequency of extramission responses). Data presented later in this article (Gregg et al, 2001) likewise show more than 50% of adults giving extramission responses. It is interesting that the favored representations (input followed by output or simultaneous input and output) do not match what some of the early philosophers claimed about vision.…”

“…A pilot study showed no difference between college students tested before and after course work on vision (defined as reading assignments, lectures, and a midterm test). We (Gregg et al, 2001) then turned to a design in which we presented readings on vision immediately before extramission tests for students who either had or had not yet learned about visual perception in their introductory psychology courses. Experimental students received a reading on vision immediately prior to the i-e tests; control participants received a reading unrelated to vision.…”

The Impact of Language and Response Format on Student Endorsement of Psychological Misconceptions

“…Although numerous techniques have been devised to index misconceptions in other scientific domains, including computer assessment (Gregg et al, 2001), interviews (Hamza & Wickman, 2008), open-ended questions (Klymkowsky & Garvin-Doxas, 2008) and concept-mapping (Liu, Lin, & Tsia, 2009), these procedures have yet to be used consistently in the study of psychological misconceptions. Future work could also include one or more of these procedures when indexing student misconceptions and compare task performance for the same student population using existing questionnaires.…”

Internationalizing Psychology Courses

“…Remarkably, studies using a variety of methodologies demonstrate that large percentages of college students believe that tiny particles emerge from the eyes when people perceive the world (Winer, Cottrell, Greg, Fournier, & Bica, 2002). Moreover, these beliefs do not decline much, if at all, following standard college lectures on sensation and perception (Gregg, Winer, Cottrell, Hedman, & Fournier, 2001), most or all of which presumably do not address extramission beliefs explicitly. If such research is generalizable to other psychological domains, it suggests that the failure to address misconceptions explicitly in coursework often leaves such misconceptions intact.…”