sex/vision research

it all started with video games....

[a story, for hirstory's sake.]

scene 1: sitting around, with a group of fellow programmers, half women, playing various nintendo 64 video games. the boys were outperforming the girls over and over again. certainly, my intuition would say that it was socialization. most of the writing on video games suggests that it is. yet, there was something different about this situation. the women knew how the program worked, they knew their required tasks, they knew what was happening and yet their performance did not indicate that. they reacted miserably to certain tasks, particularly those requiring depth. i found it peculiar and started thinking.

scene 2: amsterdam, working at the gender clinic. transsexuals keep telling me anecdotal stories of how their vision changes as they start testosterone/estrogen treatments. i hear comments of changes in color hue detection, night vision, bumping into objects & feeling as though they are relearning how to see depth. there was work undergoing, trying to figure out how hormone differences impact spatial relations, but this was different and it boggled my mind. the result of this work was an anecdotal based paper.

scene 3: a research project started. alongside leslie welch, i have been analyzing how different depth cues work in relation to one another and to the individual. as a result, i realized that i was still too far in over my head. we ran two separate experiments and determined that much of the research that we were depending on to be accurate was not.

scene 4: although we didn't achieve all of our desired goals, i decided that it was time to graduate. as such, i wrapped up the project, recorded everything that i learned and all that needed to be done to continue down this path of research. there's a lot more to do in this area but i need to refocus. if anyone is interested in this area of research and would like to talk about how to get started, what needs to be done, what i learned, etc., please email me!