Losing Control of Characters and the Brain

[Stephen Palmer]

But not everything works that way. Imagine if the feet had a distinct left handed or right handed favoring for ordinary walking. We would all probably be enrolled in the Ministry Of Silly Walks if that was true.

iirc most people have a leading foot and a leading eye. Can't remember exactly - must seek the info out online.
My mum noticed I was left-footed from a very early age.

 

[-K2-]

iirc most people have a leading foot and a leading eye. Can't remember exactly - must seek the info out online.
My mum noticed I was left-footed from a very early age.

It's actually both (though more commonly called 'your dominant eye'). What a lot of folks don't realize is, animals do as well. They even use 'foot leading dominant' (left or right) to determine if a dog is more or less suitable as a leader dog (for the blind) and other service dogs. IOW, which side's foot do they use when they begin to walk... and I believe... they also check L/R eye dominance as well.

In any case, before you go checking your dog, let's check you! Extend out your arm and hold up one finger. Close your right eye a couple times, then your left while keeping your gaze fixed on your finger. One or the other eye will cause your finger to shift L-or-R compared to when both eyes are open... Whichever eye DOES NOT cause that shift, is your dominant eye. That is the eye you should use when looking over rifle sights or through a scope... You know, when you're out shooting your bazooka or whatever.

You can retrain yourself to use a left or right handed gun/bow/RPG/etc., based on which hand is dominant. But, you cannot retrain which eye is. So, you will find a few right handed folks using left handed firearms--and vice versa--to suit the firearm to their dominant eye.

K2

 

[Star-child]

My finger doesn't shift.

 

[Biskit]

Then there's the ambidextrous...
My father recently mentioned getting flack from the sergeant when he was doing his national service in the 1950s. During rifle training he picked the weapon and fired left-handed, having previously done it right-handed. Sergeant was not impressed with Dad "larking around".
Dad qualified as "marksman" on one side, "first class shot" on the other. (Which suggests one side was still dominant.)

 

[Biskit]

My finger doesn't shift.

Neither does mine. With or without specs on. (without the specs, my finger looks a bit blurry)

 

[-K2-]

Neither does mine. With or without specs on. (without the specs, my finger looks a bit blurry)

Try it again, alternately close one eye and then the other--back and forth--it will move, glasses regardless. If you're still having trouble seeing it, bring your finger closer first--then move it away--otherwise, you'll see a double image with both eyes open. The side it is the same as both eyes open is your dominant side.

K2

 

[tinkerdan]

You will find most people will have trouble making this work.

In any case, before you go checking your dog, let's check you! Extend out your arm and hold up one finger. Close your right eye a couple times, then your left while keeping your gaze fixed on your finger. One or the other eye will cause your finger to shift L-or-R compared to when both eyes are open... Whichever eye DOES NOT cause that shift, is your dominant eye. That is the eye you should use when looking over rifle sights or through a scope... You know, when you're out shooting your bazooka or whatever.

This is because it is both a function of focus and field of vision and has nothing to do with dominant eyes.

Try this with your test.
Pick a blank wall and stand arms length from the blank wall.
Do your test and it should have very little if any deviance from left to right to both eyes.

Try doing this with a populated wall(pictures-sconces-etc) stand at least ten feet away from the wall--try to focus on the finger.
Now you will see a shift--however it is not the finger shifting, but the objects in the field behind. This is because your eyes are a distance apart from each other and the longer the distance the more the brain has to compensate for that angle.

Your finger test is mostly measuring the difference between the angle each eye sees thing at the varying distances. When you put a blank wall in front of the finger the distance to your field of vision is less and uncluttered so when you focus on the finger you will do so without distraction and you'll find the finger doesn't appear to shift. Once you open the field of vision and make it busy with other objects then you notice a shift no matter how much you try to focus on the finger. However if you focus on a distant object and try closing one eye you will see considerably less to very little shift because you've changed the focus to something further out in your field.

Basically the only thing the finger test really does is demonstrate how much the brain has to adjust things to keep things in focus because your eyes are not observing from the exact same point.

 

[tinkerdan]

I fractured my right arm twice while in grade school and my teachers were diligent about keeping me from using the arm with the cast--so they kept forcing me to put the pen in the other hand. As a consequence I have learned to write with both hands; however these were the penmanship years and it proved out that I would always have poor penmanship--which they somehow let me off the hook because I was handicapped.

I must be left footed because I've been told I have two left feet.
Though I am right handed I am also somewhat ambidextrous though more often than not I seem to be all thumbs.

Somewhere along the line I learned to read upside down, and often while someone has a page set before them and opposite me I am reading it along with them--though they find it hard to believe and I have to pause long enough for them to think I'm reading it after they spin it around for me to read.

I can't carry a tune and might be tone-def; though I haven't had that verified--unless you count the horrified looks on faces when people hear me sing.

I definitely can't chew gum and walk--or do much of anything else. I used to bite my jaw so much I finally gave up gum.

Recently--due to a lazy eye--I started seeing double; thankfully the ground prisms in my glasses corrected that. I was really getting a headache from it all. I'd guess that the lazy one is not the dominant one.

I also recently found that bright white paper with bold blue print can burn out the receptors in my eyes causing me to see the blue text as a sort of brackish black print and giving me a nauseous headache.

As you can see I have several flaws.

So always take what I say with a grain of salt.

However; I'm fairly certain that the shift one sees from closing one eye is always going to be because the eyes are seeing things from a different angle and it is a wonder that the brain can sort it all out and make sense of it so that we don't have two views of one world. I think that that could end up being a headache--eventually.

 

[-K2-]

Basically the only thing the finger test really does is demonstrate how much the brain has to adjust things to keep things in focus because your eyes are not observing from the exact same point.

Yeah... though, not really. This test is a common, old, and still used one, to determine which eye is dominant, and will match the relative location seen when using both eyes. I don't invent this stuff, I just share it.

K2

 

[Star-child]

Yeah... though, not really. This test is a common, old, and still used one, to determine which eye is dominant, and will match the relative location seen when using both eyes. I don't invent this stuff, I just share it.

K2

I've had a lot of vision testing and neuroanatomy courses. This test doesn't work or even make sense if both eyes start focused on the finger.

Do you have link?

 

[HareBrain]

@-K2- , something happens for me but it's not exactly what you're describing.

Focusing on the finger gives an overlapping double image of the background (in my case, a PC monitor about two feet away). If I close my left eye, and the image from that eye disappears, it does not seem to make a noticeable difference to the background, whereas if I close my right eye, the background seems to shift (not the finger, except in relation to the background). So my two-eyed vision is giving more weight to the right-eye background than the left-eye background. I guess that's what you mean?

 

[tinkerdan]

Here is a reference to a test that makes more sense.

How to Find Your Dominant Eye + Why You'd Want To

Try these easy tests to find your dominant eye.

www.allaboutvision.com

It uses a triangle of the fingers to center an object with both eyes open.

Then you can see where the shift is when each eye closes.
In my case they shift in opposite directions at about the same amount of shift.
So; basically no dominant eye Or the prisms in my glasses are working top notch.

The thumb test below the triangle test works better-perhaps-as it is difficult however once my thumb is over the background object(I can both see the thumb and the object superimposed)then when I do the test I find my right eye is dominant.

The index finger would also work; however only if you are using it to cover a far object just as In the thumb test.

However it is interesting that the triangle test yields different results.
This most likely has something to do with the difference between focusing on an object in the center of the triangle as opposed to focusing on the thumb that covers that object; and how each method is processed by the brain.

Further testing, when using an object a arms length in the thumb test it is much easier to conclude that there is no dominance; however I suspect that it is part of the aspect of angle and distance and that the small difference is difficult to detect at such a short distance.

To be fair: I did this test both with and without my glasses and the result is the same.

 

[-K2-]

Jiminy crickets here, knock yourselves out: Ocular dominance - Wikipedia , google is your friend, you guys are funny

As said earlier:

Try it again, alternately close one eye and then the other--back and forth--it will move, glasses regardless. If you're still having trouble seeing it, bring your finger closer first--then move it away--otherwise, you'll see a double image with both eyes open. The side it is the same as both eyes open is your dominant side.

K2

 

[Star-child]

Jiminy crickets here, knock yourselves out: Ocular dominance - Wikipedia , google is your friend, you guys are funny

K2

The test you suggested isn't in the link. You either left the distant object off the Porta test or bringing the finger in for the convergence test. That's why it didn't work.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Never mind losing control of characters, we're losing control of this thread!

 

[The Judge]

Yep, let's get back to the topic, guys -- all you lot need to know is that I'm the Oracular Dominance around here.

 

[tinkerdan]

We were merely demonstrating how, when characters are out of control and we are out of our minds, we just throw in a whole bunch of 'hand' wavium and befuddle the readers eyes.