Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'm thinking that parents or a parent who read to their children and encouraged them to read produced the curious kids who went on to pick up books on their own.
People who read were told "Look it up," when we were kids and asked our parents questions. When I got to work and was a team leader if someone asked me a question that had an answer in a manual, I told them to look it up rather than give them the answer. After awhile, they realized I wasn't going to hold their hand for them. You aren't helping them if you have to spoon feed them. By the way, I don't see a difference between telling someone to look it up in a book or look it up on the Internet. The dim bulbs won't read beyond a sentence or two no matter where the information is located.
Socially, you can tell who reads for enjoyment and/or to increase their knowledge and who doesn't. The non-readers think the readers are boring and the readers think the non-readers are stupid. I can say that "stupid" remark because I put this in the third paragraph and the non-readers didn't read beyond the first one.
On why people think they're eyes get worse looking at a computer screen, I'd thought I'd throw this in:
Your eyes adjust for near and far because of two muscles on either side of the eyeball that contract and expand. As you get older, it takes longer for these muscles to move because they stiffen up. If you are in a situation where you use your long distance vision every day, you will notice it start to get a little better. I drove through North Dakota once and by the end of the day, I was seeing better than I ever had before. However, when you look at things close up, like a book or a computer screen, it's going to take a while for your eyes to adjust back to distance seeing again. If you spend the entire day looking at a computer monitor, then go home to watch a large TV screen, and then read a book, your eyes really don't have time to recover. You have to work those eye muscles.
I remember my anthropology teacher once telling us about a tribe in Africa that lived solely in the forest. When they were taken out of the forest, they had no depth perception. They had never seen further away than a couple feet in the forest, so they had no way to tell how far they were seeing.
On why people think they're eyes get worse looking at a computer screen, I'd thought I'd throw this in:
Your eyes adjust for near and far because of two muscles on either side of the eyeball that contract and expand. As you get older, it takes longer for these muscles to move because they stiffen up. If you are in a situation where you use your long distance vision every day, you will notice it start to get a little better. I drove through North Dakota once and by the end of the day, I was seeing better than I ever had before. However, when you look at things close up, like a book or a computer screen, it's going to take a while for your eyes to adjust back to distance seeing again. If you spend the entire day looking at a computer monitor, then go home to watch a large TV screen, and then read a book, your eyes really don't have time to recover. You have to work those eye muscles.
I remember my anthropology teacher once telling us about a tribe in Africa that lived solely in the forest. When they were taken out of the forest, they had no depth perception. They had never seen further away than a couple feet in the forest, so they had no way to tell how far they were seeing.
Nope. The muscles you are referring to control the way the eyes move: left, right, up, and down.
The focus of an image on the retina is determined by the lens, the shape of which is determined by a muscle inside the eye called the ciliary body:
Depth perception depends on having two working eyes. It works at two feet as well as at twenty feet. Your tribe may have had difficulty judging distance in a new environment, but that is not because they lacked depth perception; they just had a different frame of reference for the comparison. There appear to be cultural differences in how we interpret illusions, for example:
The ciliary muscle can get tired, so prolonged focusing at one distance can cause eye discomfort. For example, if you are using a computer all day, periodically looking away from the screen to focus on a different distance may help.
"According to a study conducted in late April by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Institute of Literacy:
32 million adults in the U.S. can't read. (14 percent of the population). 21 percent of adults in the U.S. read below a 5th grade level, and 19 percent of high school graduates can't read.
According to the Department of Justice:
85 percent of all juveniles who interface with the juvenile court system are functionally illiterate, and over 70 percent of inmates in America's prisons cannot read above a fourth grade level."
You know sometimes I think people back in the earlier centuries were much more intellectually aware due to what they were taught . There was I believe a reverence for knowledge, the actions of great people and also how one goes about expressing themselves in writing and speech. Funny thing is as we've 'progressed' in time we don't write letters much , we don't read as much and the 'past' is simply yesterday. Hehe I wonder how many people know about a fellow named 'Cicero'. Would the immediate response be that it's simply a name for a nice dog?
Yeah I jest but it probably isn't funny when we look around and see how being weak in all that affects one's quality of life and interactions in society. I mean if you can't understand things and make connections how do you know where you're going and making plans?
Depth perception depends on having two working eyes. It works at two feet as well as at twenty feet. Your tribe may have had difficulty judging distance in a new environment, but that is not because they lacked depth perception; they just had a different frame of reference for the comparison. There appear to be cultural differences in how we interpret illusions, for example:
The ciliary muscle can get tired, so prolonged focusing at one distance can cause eye discomfort. For example, if you are using a computer all day, periodically looking away from the screen to focus on a different distance may help.
No, it takes muscles to change the focus on your eyes when you look from near to far and back again. When those muscles start getting stiff in dogs, they turn whiteish and that's what you see when you see the whiteish eyes in an older dog, usually about 7 years or older.
In experiments with animals it's been found that if the animals aren't exposed to "normal" sight, that is, if one eye is sutured and the other is not, after a certain amount of time, the eye that was sutured is essentially "blind", even though there is physically nothing wrong with it. The eye and the brain have to make a connection and when that connection isn't made, it doesn't return.
The tribe that had never had to see far away had basically lost the connection in their brain for doing that. They literally couldn't see how far a distance was. If asked about something on the road off in the distance, they would reply that it was right in front of them.
No, it takes muscles to change the focus on your eyes when you look from near to far and back again. When those muscles start getting stiff in dogs, they turn whiteish and that's what you see when you see the whiteish eyes in an older dog, usually about 7 years or older.
In experiments with animals it's been found that if the animals aren't exposed to "normal" sight, that is, if one eye is sutured and the other is not, after a certain amount of time, the eye that was sutured is essentially "blind", even though there is physically nothing wrong with it. The eye and the brain have to make a connection and when that connection isn't made, it doesn't return.
The tribe that had never had to see far away had basically lost the connection in their brain for doing that. They literally couldn't see how far a distance was. If asked about something on the road off in the distance, they would reply that it was right in front of them.
I would like to see a link to an article about the tribe you are describing. I cannot find anything about it. It may well be that they have a perception problem, but I highly doubt that it was due to a physical problem with the eyes. They just had a problem with their brains decoding what their perfectly normal eyes showed them.
It certainly was not a problem with depth perception, because depth perception works up close, too. It results from having the brain coordinate the images from the two separate eyes.
Visual perception also accounts for the many different kinds of optical illusions that have been described, which happen with eyes that are anatomically normal.
Vision is amazing, and the brain can do strange things with it. For example, see what happens when you wear glasses that flip what you see upside down.
The whitish color you note in the eyes of old dogs is due to cataracts (dense spots) in the lens and has nothing to do with muscles.
The muscle that allows you to accommodate to changes from near to far vision is inside the eyeball, not outside of it. It is called the ciliary body. That muscle changes the shape of the lens in the eye. It does not move the eyeball.
The eye suturing experiment you described is part of research trying to understand a condition called amblyopia in humans. It is due to the brain suppressing the image from one eye because the two eyes do not work together properly or one eye creates a blurred image.
Have you not yet seen a lucrative opportunity here? They need your help. They can't read. By golly, they're potential clients! Hello? You can charge them for your services.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
