I can't help flinching when I watch this

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/24/i-cant-help-flinching-when-i-watch-this.html

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I flinch more at the guy watching than at the ball.

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It’s mainly because the ball is white and rapidly fills your focused field of vision. You would get the same flinch response if you fired an electronic flash into someone’s eyes from a short distance.

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Not really. This is a looming stimulus. We, like all sighted animals in which its been studied, are born with innate ability to detect objects coming directly on a collision course. Ball showed 50 years ago that human infants have an innate defensive response to this kind of stimulus. Since then, neurons in the superior colliculus have been discovered that detect only these sort of expansions while not responding to flashes.

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The first time I saw this, I reflexively threw my tablet up in the air. I’m glad I was in bed.

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It looks like there’s a washing machine conveniently right behind the guy wearing his coffee.

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I didn’t flinch, but I couldn’t stop myself from holding my breath a bit every loop. No idea what that says about me, I hate jump scares.

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Without the flinch

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I flinched the first time, but I muted the sound for the second time and didn’t. I turned the sound back on for the third viewing and flinched again.

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Experienced this firsthand, without a facemask. It was more surprising than anything. Shock and adrenaline are hella drugs.

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If you’re watching fullscreen, and/or in a dark room, that is probably triggering the Corneal Reflex. Not much you can to to avoid a reflex.

But that wouldn’t have anything to do with why people ran out of movies theatres, or they’d still run out.

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My right eye twitched. But then I threw down my bat and charged the mound.

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I never flinched but would feel a sensation travel down my spine each time.
but after reading your post, I killed the sound and felt nothing. that is odd.

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It doesn’t make me flinch but does sometimes elicit an involuntary blink (about half the time). Notably, while I certainly can be startled, I almost never jump or show much external reaction when it happens, to the perpetual annoyance of my friends; it takes all the fun out of a good prank ^^’. It’s probably related.

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User name checks out.

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I flinched.

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I had an involuntary blink the first time, then nothing.

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It made me jump! But then I have a low tolerance of things coming near my eyes. Happy to play badminton, but can’t play squash (racquetball in the US.).

BTW - that problem with the “comments” link looping back to the original article is still very much in evidence. Not on THIS article, obviously, but on a few other current ones.

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Just mopped all the Earl Grey off my MacBook Pro. What, me, flinch?

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I would use a similar example in class to demonstrate that there are parts of our brain that are constantly working even when we aren’t thinking about it. Even if you aren’t paying attention, if someone within your field of view throws something at you - you will respond. Your brain is constantly “seeing” the entire range of your vision, however you are usually only paying attention to a small percentage of that.

To some degree that is where the fallacy of “We only use 10% of our brain” enters the picture. We are really only AWARE of perhaps 10% of what our brain is doing, but it’s doing stuff ALL THE TIME.

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