This fact was recently brought home to me in an unexpected way. I was at my optometrist's office, getting my vision checked with one of those eye charts--you know, the standard one with the big E on top, and rows of letters that get progressively smaller and harder to read as you move down. The optometrist asked me why I was tilting my head. Was I? I was! I hadn't even realized it, it was so well-learned and automatic an adjustment. Tilting my head back a little brought the letters into slightly better focus, as I verified when I experimented, trying to read different rows on the eye chart with my head at different angles. It wasn't a large effect, but under the pressure of struggling to make out the tiniest letters, tilting definitely helped. It's almost spooky.
The first thing I thought of when I read this is "squinting". About twice a week, one of my dogs will wake up in the middle of the night and make a high pitched bark (I swear, he is manding! Haha). Anyhow, without fail, I jump up out of bed and let him outside to go to the bathroom. I never sleep with my eye contacts in, and he is a dark (nearly black) dog. I watch him the entire time that he is outside. He will often go to the back of the yard, and is completely out of focus for me. So I always "experiment" a bit with squinting my eyes and tilting my head, and when I find a perfect position, I keep it there until he comes running back. It is so funny to think about these everyday occurrences in terms of consequences! I am sure, over time, some angles or squints will be selected, and others will or have fallen by the wayside due to not contacting reinforcing consequences.
ReplyDeleteAnyhow, thought I would share! It really is a pleasure to take a minute out of the day and examine the lawfulness of our own behavior!