Question

Discuss the methods, results, and implications of the Holway and Boring (1941) 'hallway' experiment.

Answer 1

The Hallway experiment conducted in 1941 by Holway and Boring was carried out in order to define the degree of sensation and perception via elements such as size constancy,distance scaling,etc.While carrying out this experiment, various equations were drafted,

for example: 1.The size-distance scaling (Relationship between two functions)

S=kRD,

Here, "S" is the size of the object,"k" is the scaling constant, "R" is the retinal image size and "D" is the perceived distance between the observer and the object.

S=kR

The Method:

The experiment athered to the standards of Millersville University's Institutional Review Board.Out of which 56 students who were not aware of the experiment participated and a second group of students from the sensation and perception class were chosen.

They conducted the experiment in a university building that which has several classrooms and offices on each of the floor.They then placed circles in a 12-ft 8-ft office room and, although the room had no exterior windows, the door to the room had a window which made the interior visible from the hallway. They occluded the window with cardboards except for a 2-cm2 aperture, 120 cm above the floor. It was small enough to prevent any binocular viewing whatsoever. The office room was not prepared in any particular way; desks,computers, chairs and bookshelves were easily visible through the aperture and served as environmental depth cues when the room’s interiors were illuminated.

Results:

For the 25 sensation and perception students who completed the pretest and posttest quiz, posttest scores (M ¼ 4.04, SD ¼ 0.98) were significantly higher than pretest scores (M ¼ 2.88, SD ¼ 1.17), t(24)¼3.82, p ¼ .001 (two-tailed), d ¼ 0.76. Of the 26 responding sensation and perception students, 22 agreed that the demonstration improved and reatined their understandings of the Holway–Boring (1941) experiment by answering d or e on Item 6 of the posttest quiz. The five students who reported that the demonstration did not improve their understanding stated that they did so because the textbook description of the original experiment was sufficient enough for them. It was expected, most participants chose Circle A as the larger circle when the room was illuminated, but most chose Circle B when the room was dark and depth cues were not available. There was an important relationship between viewing condition and circle choice for the counterbalanced group (unaware students)- w2 (1, n ¼ 56) ¼ 45.56, p < .001, j ¼ 0.90 , as well as the sensation and perception students- w2 (1, n ¼ 27) ¼ 19.32, p < .001, j ¼ 0.85. Number of unaware students choosing either Circle A or Circle B as the larger circle in each of the two conditions. Circle A was physically more large and identified as the larger circle by most participants when the room was illuminated. However, Circle A had a rather smaller angular size which made Circle B appear larger in the dark condition, when depth cues were absent. Simulated participant's perspective in the illuminated condition (top) and in the dark condition (bottom).