Word of a new dance craze sweeping the nation troubles perceptual psychologists.
“I just don’t understand it,” says Mike Tarr, “This is a beautiful psychological effect that’s being abused for cheap amusement.”
Dr. Tarr is referring to the increasing use of visual perceptual grouping principles to appear to defy gravity in dance moves. Word from multiple sources confirms that teenagers have been seen reading Steve Pinker’s classics “Visual Cogntion” and “How The Brain Works” to gain inspiration for their dance moves.
“I really don’t get what the big deal is,” says post-doctoral fellow and cognitive neuroscientist Elissa Aminoff, “I go to parties all the time and see some really crazy but interesting stuff straight out of my textbooks. It’s not hurting anybody.”
But Dr. Tarr begs to differ. ”Who knows what continued exposure to these perceptual illusions will do to our experiments! We know the brain is highly plastic and changes with experience. Will the effect of regularly seeing these illusions on the dance floor and in parties reduce the effect sizes we obtain in our lab experiments? If so, I think it could be highly detrimental to perceptual science.”
The PLB has obtained exclusive footage of such so called PerGroupStep being performed.
