3-D Movies are for Kids!

When I was young, I remember being very excited whenever I see the eye glasses made out of cardboard with red and blue lenses. I remember having comic strips that come with the said 3-D glasses and I was always amazed at how the colored glasses bring the comics to life by making the characters pop out of the paper. It made my reading fun and very enjoyable. Nowadays, there has been a famous trend in movies. A lot of the films released are available in 3-D. Movies are not the only forms of media seen in 3-D. There are also newspaper editions that come with 3-D glasses, making the pictures and the text pop out. I find it interesting how businesses make lots and lots of money by making everything 3-D. This made me interested on looking for factors that may affect three-dimensional perception.

Three-dimensional scenes provide useful information that help people in doing their day to day tasks such as driving. Research has shown that the ground or floor part of the scenes play important roles in helping people put what they see into context. Studies conducted for the past years showed that visual processing and visual perception are affected by aging. Growing in years could affect perception of 3-D scenes because of the processing changes the visual system and brain undergo. In 2008, Bian and Anderson conducted a study in order to find out whether younger and older people have differences in the perception of 3-D scenes. Using the experiments they designed, they wanted to find out whether older people have greater or lesser preferences for using ground information in perceiving three-dimensional scenes.

Bian and Anderson did not really know what to expect from their study. They believed that the longer exposure of older individuals to the environment will make them more efficient in processing 3-D scenes. However, due to the numerous studies on the decline of the visual system as one ages, they also thought that age will negatively affect perception of 3-D scenes. The average ages of their participants were 21 and 71 years old for the younger and older groups, respectively. The data gathered from the three experiments they conducted were consistent with their second hypothesis that three-dimensional scene processing declines with age. They found out that their older participants depend less on ground information in the scenes compared to younger individuals.

After reading this article, I started to realize why most of the movies that are available in 3-D are cartoons. The film makers have probably heard about this study so they thought they should invest their money more on what will sell more. I remember that the first 3-D film that I watched was Toy Story 3. I noticed that most of the patrons of the film were kids although some of the adults who were watching may be fans of the first two installments of the movie. Personally, I really did not enjoy much of the experience. The ticket costs so much more than the 2-D version. Also, I really did not notice the differences between watching a 3-D film and the one that is 2-D. I did not experience how the characters pop out of the screen while I was watching the movie. Wearing the 3-D glasses was somehow annoying but when I take them off, I got dizzy while watching. What I probably liked most about getting tickets for the 3-D film was the free popcorn and drinks. That was the most enjoyable part of my experience. I would probably be convinced to watch another 3-D movie if someone else will buy my ticket… Oh no. Does this mean that I am really getting old because I process three-dimensional information differently already?

Bian, Z. & Andersen, G. (2008). Aging and the perceptual organization of 3-D scenes. Psychology and Aging, 23(2), 342-352.

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