I had this theory the other day feel free to find holes

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Hi, I don't know if I have Asperger's or just really bad depression, that's what I was diagnosed with recently. I've become really obsessed with the uncanny valley recently http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley , more in the context of what makes things seem frightening/unreal/awkward/'other' in some way. The concept came out of the field of robotics but also can be applied to things like why people find zombies/mannequins/clowns? eerie. I've seen a couple of things (commercials/music videos/bits of movies) and now I'm convinced all you would need to do to make someone seem odd/bizarre/unfamiliar is if the speed you take visual information is either faster or more jerky/uneven than people usually see. I'm leaning towards faster (as in, like 120 FPS if most people see at 60 FPS) because that would probably enhance an eye for detail instead of make it worse/the same. I think the response in people could range from extreme fear/repulsion to finding it hilarious to a completely flat response/seeing the person's body/face as just a bunch of moving parts. It wouldn't contradict things like photographic memory since I could only seeing it help remember images better.

Also related to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capgras_syndrome

I know this is images of dogs (obviously) but this is the best example of what I'm trying to convey

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx0UwY5IQMo

and this commercial

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev7q729PcbQ

also anything shot with this, but you have to kind of search around for the good moments

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... amera&aq=f

I'm not sure if there are some other visual effects that help with the eerie effect, but I think most of it is the high-speed photography

Also I hate the 'blank slate' theory too like somebody was writing a couple days ago, this kind of is the opposite because probably the reaction to uncanny images is determined by culture/temperament/PERSONALITY you know


also if I kind of made this post in a roundabout way to summarize I think a lot of symptoms of autism could be explained by just seeing 'faster'/or just a general taking in of information was faster, after seeing what ordinary scenes look like at 1000 FPS or so and seeing how bizarre it looks/not like life as a John Woo movie

fill in the blanks with the URLs

Edit: oh yeah the idea also partially came out about what I'd heard before about fluorescent lights and autistic people (which have a higher refresh rate than regular bulbs I guess?) and the book Blink where the author had some sort of idea that autism is something wrong with the way the body handles adrenaline/everything feels 'slower' like during a very intense situation

Standard fluorescent tubes have the same refresh rate as bulbs but because there's no filament heating inertia the refresh rate can be more readily visible. It's just a vapour being excited directly by the voltage so light output changes virtually instantaneously, and I think it's pretty well documented that fluorescent lights can trigger migraines for some people.
They're also prone to flicker being caused by a faulty starter but that sort of flicker is generally obvious and annoying to anyone.

In a conventional incandescent bulb there's a hot wire glowing and although it's being switched on and off at the same rate (determined by the alternating voltage feeding it), the wire doesn't cool enough between cycles for the light level and colour change to be visible.
And unlike fluorescent lights, they're full spectrum lights. Fluorescents tend to output two or three colours (or rather, the coating on the inside of the tube does) which appear to be white, so that's another potential source of visual problems for some people.

Compact fluorescent lamps run at a higher frequency so although they still flicker, they do so at a much faster rate and it isn't visible. But the colour quality of these things - certainly the stuff bought in hardware stores - is just awful.
Common fluorescent tubes can be better, but generally they're not that much unless specialist shops are used.

(with huge apologies for ignoring the rest of your post )

Do human eyes have a frame rate, and if so do different people have different frame rates? These seem to be assumptions the theory rests on.

Movie fps are around 24, Most games I've played need to have at least that, and more like 30-40fps so it's smooth enough to not noticeable. Your brain can only take in so many fps, with adrenaline you step up the info coming in, like a higher fps. This makes things seem to last longer as you get more information that you usually would in the same amount of time.

If autism caused an increase in the amount of images the brain could process in a second, that would be how you would see all the time, there would be now slow motion affect, that would just be how you saw. In order for there to be a problem, it would have to speed up or slow down when you saw a clown in your example. But it's more likely clowns are just kind of creepy.

I find fluorescent bulbs often flicker noticeably, especially when there are a bunch of those tubes, some of them always pulse like there not fully heated up. I think it's less a factor of fps and more a factor of failure to prioritize information coming in.

Human eyes do not have an alternating lateral scan mechanism like a t.v. camera.

ruveyn

I don't think it's a frame rate as such, just the inherent delay built into the way that vision cells are able to respond (light hits, chemical change, change information travels to brain through more chemical changes, information registered & processed), so it seems entirely possible that this whole process may just occur more quickly for some people.
Films appear to be an uninterrupted, smooth motion because of this delay, and the cut-off point is (I think) around 25 frames per second before it becomes clear that what's being viewed is really a series of still images - so the same thing should occur for some film viewers too.

That's basically what I was trying to figure out how to put into words. XD

But here's an interesting link on fps: http://www.100fps.com/how_many_frames_c ... ns_see.htm

I don't know anything about frame rates, etc. I just know that I don't like harsh lighting. At work I always have the main fluorescent lights switched off inside my office.

At home, I have two spot lights in the ceiling of my study, and they are always turned away so that I can only see the glow on the ceiling, and not the actual CFL bulb. I usually only have one switched on.

I just find ordinary fluorescent lights give too much glare. Maybe subconsciously the rate of flicker has something to do with it. I don't know.

That's a really good article. I love my high fps moniter. When everything about it is considered, I wonder if it goes back to what Ragnar was saying. On my other monitors, I had a hard time focusing on text, but with this one it's not as bad.

This is all pretty interesting, although I'm not sure that framerate is related to the uncanny valley.

I am not sure what is, because generally speaking, I don't see the uncanny valley effect. Weird.

sorry if I kind of mixed up what I was trying to say. Basically Verdandi said it best in the last post - not-quite but nearly-human faces are supposed to cause the uncanny valley effect, but also movement is important/possibly even more important to achieve an eerie/uncanny effect. This would be why movies like The Ring/Jacob's Ladder manage to be scary when for the most part all that's going on is strange/jerky movements. But now that high-speed cameras are catching on in movies/commercials I think that 'actual' slow-motion looks very uncanny as well.

So sorry the whole clown thing was just an example, would be an example of an uncanny likenesses of humans, along with mannequins. Basically any representation of a human can be uncanny. I'm saying that even a ordinary person (not dressed as a clown etc.) would become uncanny if suddenly the frame rate of vision were to increase and you could see face muscles moving that you shouldn't normally be able to see, things like that


also real human beings can be uncanny, the uncanny valley is used as an explanation why people can't help but inappropriately stare/laugh/feel disgust at disabled/deformed people despite knowing better

I guess there is speculation that autistic people would be less sensitive to the uncanny valley effect, I was sort of suggesting the opposite, that ordinary healthy people would fall into the uncanny valley this way

I think you have a point with the shutter speed/framerate thing and stuff looking creepy. It does a lot more (for me anyway) than what people call the uncanny valley.

Also movements without framerate or shutter speed effects might prompt it (this did for some people I know, at least):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-AGWq0k_Mo[/youtube]

That robot is awesome!

I felt bad for it when the guy kicked it. Also when it slipped on the ice. I know it doesn't have feelings, but... I felt bad.