Angle Of Visual Perception

I recently noticed that my son can change his AngleOfVisualPerception like I can. I wonder if this is a normal thing or something special.

I mean the following:

I can consciously change me field of view. If I concentrate I will perceive more of what lies in my visual view. It is like the angle of what I can consciously see gets wider. It is not like I squint or scan left and right. My eyes still have the same orientation and alignment. I just take in more of the environment consciously.

My eyes still see the same, but I think the difference is in what is processed consciously and what unconsciously. If I am focussed and not in 'wide mode' some events at the periphery of my vision still register or cause me to look there, but I will usually not take note of 'unimportant' changes or details. On the other hand when I concentrate and look wide I will see all the little motions of people around me - or the motions of birds and leafs outdoors.

But it takes concentration. My normal mode of perception is the small angle directly in front of me.

My son also seems to have this. He is only 4 1/2 but he told me yesterday morning, that he could see front, left and right and 'showed' us by looking - well - as before, but very concentrated and from his other remarks I'd guess that he described exactly the above.

-- GunnarZarncke

This isn't at all unusual, GZ. This seeing technique is commonly taught in a variety of combat arts (fencing, various forms of karate, etc.) as it aides in detection of attack patterns, and I occasionally use it while driving if my periphery and mirrors are of greater immediate relevance than what is in front of me. As with most activities that initially take conscious effort, it can also be reduced to UnconsciousCompetence. I would be interested in studies that determine whether it is primarily a brain-effect or involves considerable motor operations in the eyes.

I didn't know whether is were normal or unusual. I just haven't heard about it as such. My wife for example doesn't seem to understand what I mean by it. But on the other hand she seems to be in 'wide angle' mode all the time - picking out friends in a crowd even while talking, noticing any misbehaviour of the children while cooking, seeing small animals during a walk even... -- Gunnar Zarncke

I HaveThisPattern. I think it's an ability that's latent in most people but rarely taken advantage of.

I wonder whether the wide angle view is/used to be the primary mode. In a jungle you'd have to concentrate on all of your environment most of the time. Only in a secure environment you can risk concentrating on one small point of interest only.

On an interesting side note (sorry, unintentional pun), I was playing with this exact thing one day (while waiting in a line-up of cars for a ferry), and realized that the part of my brain that processes the stuff on the sides is not literate. I could look at a license plate (letters easily visible and distinguishable even when blurred) 6 feet away from me, and read the letters and numbers without any difficulty when I stared straight on. Looking at the same license plate through my peripheral vision (staring about 3 feet to either side, probably about 15 degrees), I found I could clearly make out the shapes of the letters and numbers, but could not assign any meaning to them. Further tests showed that anything more than 5 degrees off of a direct gaze dropped my comprehension to nil. I posit, however, that this is more because I learned to read by staring at letters straight on (like most people), and have never trained my brain to attach any literate meaning to items view in the periphery. It may be, though, that this is caused by the fact that an entirely different part of the brain (one that is effectively incapable of what we consider to be literacy) is processing the images, thereby causing the deficit in comprehension. -- EarlJenkins