Interactive Primary Bulletin 38 | ||
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Tricking your brain - Colour confusion Optical Illusions | ||
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This activity, on the face of it, is very simple. Print a list of colours where the actual colour of the text doesn’t correspond with the words (Fig. 5a). This is an ideal activity for an interactive white board. Time the members of the class on their ability to accurately describe what colour they see and not what it says. Collate the results and see if the teacher can do any better! Figure 5a - Colour confusion chart Interestingly, this is an activity where poorer readers may have an advantage because they may be less influenced by the written words. Ask the children why they may make mistakes in what seems to be such an apparently simple task. Try the same experiment with fuzzy, indistinct text, reversed, small, foreign language and upside-down! (Figure 5b)
Figure 5b - Does textual confusion help you see the colours more easily? | ||
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Many things can confuse the signals and communication between the eye and brain. Optical illusions don’t actually trick the eye, but our mind. The brain tries to change and distort images in an attempt make sense of them. There are different types of optical illusions. See a varied selection on the web - Links 1, 2 & 3 | ||
 Figure 6 - Are the above lines straight, curved, horizontal? |
 Figure 7 - Which red dot appears bigger? |
 Figure 8 - Count the number of black dots on the image! |
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 Figure 10 - are the angled lines parallel to each other? |
 Figure 11 - has the square straight or curved edges? |
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