Noticing that a phone screen turn off before it does

[repoman]

This is going to be difficult to explain, but when my cell phone is near me and I am on my laptop I seem to notice the phone screen turning off before it turns off. I am pretty sure it just turns off and doesn't dim or brighten just before.

But that doesn't make any sense. Is there a second more reflexive system operating that sends the signals to another part of my brain? Or something else going on?

Almost every time it happens, I can see about 0.1 to 0.2 seconds (total guess) of the phone turning off.

 

[dystopian]

This is going to be difficult to explain, but when my cell phone is near me and I am on my laptop I seem to notice the phone screen turning off before it turns off. I am pretty sure it just turns off and doesn't dim or brighten just before.

I'm having difficulty picturing what you're talking about. Do you mean you see it turn off once and them immediately see it again? Do you instead mean that you just see it once, but it feels like you saw it happen before it actually happened? If it's the former, that's a glitch in the matrix. If it's the latter, it sounds like you're imagining it. Since you're only seeing it happen once, your brain is just misjudging the timescale involved. Since you mention it only happens when you're on your laptop, I'd imagine it's just you being distracted; your brain is juggling multiple inputs and doesn't get it quite right.

If the problem persists when you're looking straight at it, I'd suggest going in for a checkup since it might be an ocular issue.

 

[repoman]

I think it might be related to blindsight somehow.

What is good is that anyone here can do this experiment.

 

[repoman]

Some ideas:

It could be that I am quickly replaying the phone turning off in my mind.

Maybe there is a faster delay-free route of perceiving the screen has turned off. This some how alerts the main route that NEEDS to have a delay built in so we have everything line up at the same time. That is me just talking out of my ass...

But this is from here:

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com...g-in-the-past-and-other-quirks-of-perception/

The cost of hiding the logistical details of perception is that we are always a beat behind. The brain must strike a balance. Cognitive psychologist Alex Holcombe at Sydney has some clever demonstrations showing that certain forms of motion perception take a second or longer to register, and our brains clearly can’t wait that long. Our view of the world takes shape as we watch it.

The 80-millisecond rule plays all sorts of perceptual tricks on us. As long as a hand-clapper is less than 30 meters away, you hear and see the clap happen together. But beyond this distance, the sound arrives more than 80 milliseconds later than the light, and the brain no longer matches sight and sound. What is weird is that the transition is abrupt: by taking a single step away from you, the hand-clapper goes from in sync to out of sync. Similarly, as long as a TV or film soundtrack is synchronized within 80 milliseconds, you won’t notice any lag, but if the delay gets any longer, the two abruptly and maddeningly become disjointed. Events that take place faster than 80 milliseconds fly under the radar of consciousness. A batter swings at a ball before being aware that the pitcher has even throw it.

----------------------------------------------

However, it may be a negative illusion, screen going from light to dark, but I get this jolt feeling then sense it being on and then very quickly turning off.

 

[steve_bnk]

Huh? It is just the way the software does the shutdown process. Probably prevents odd displays during the power down sequence.

Getting technical, if I were to test it I would monitor battery current against an optical sensor over the display and look at the time interval on an oscilloscope.

The eye has persistence,you can't always go by visuals, search on eye persistence.

Or you could capture a video of it and go frame by frame.

 

[bilby]

This is going to be difficult to explain, but when my cell phone is near me and I am on my laptop I seem to notice the phone screen turning off before it turns off. I am pretty sure it just turns off and doesn't dim or brighten just before.

But that doesn't make any sense. Is there a second more reflexive system operating that sends the signals to another part of my brain? Or something else going on?

Almost every time it happens, I can see about 0.1 to 0.2 seconds (total guess) of the phone turning off.

You appear to be describing a special case of chronostasis; you see the phone switch off in your peripheral vision, and this triggers a saccade, with your eye flicking very rapidly to the phone. In chronostasis, your brain 'fills in' the cognitive gap during the saccade with an image of what it expected to see, rather than what is actually there; you 'see' an illusion of the phone as still switched on, and as the central visual input catches up, the illusion is replaced with the actual observation of a switched off phone - leading to the impression that it switched off twice - once when veiwed peripherally, and then a second time an instant later, when you turned your full attention to it.

 

[repoman]

Thanks, Bilby...

That makes sense or it least is close enough enough for jazz.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Also there may be a subtle animation (the bottom and top of my cell phone meet slightly before the screen goes off) that is setting off your perception before the screen goes off entirely.

 

[Perspicuo]

Pavlovian learning?

99% of the time I get to my microwave oven just when it's about to go off after I've set it and walk away to do something else. Somehow I have a very precise internal clock, reinforcing 1 minute intervals a zillion times. BTW I detest the oven's alarm so I always turn it off one second or so before. (In my case it would be a Skinnerian relationship, not Pavlovian.)

 

[Malintent]

I imagine several explanations

1) your phone dims slightly first, then shuts off. You notice the dimming and look to see it finally shut off. My phone does this.. dims for about 3 seconds before it blacks out.

2) You have a good sence of timing and are way to "attached" to your phone. Human brains are great at timing.. part of why we love music. You can get amazingly good at timing something that is very consistent like that.. .especially if you are sort of thinking about it all the time. put the phone away already...

3) your kidding yourself.. sometime you see it shut off and sometime you don't. you are just ignoring the "misses" and only adding up the "hits". This is how "cold reading" works in a confindence trick.

4) your kidding yourself terribly... the phone goes black, you notice it go black, and then you look at it... for whatever reason, you combine these two separate events in your mind, and percieve it as one event. This happens when you are dreaming and percieve something in the "real environment" and combine this into your dream... you construct a "story" before the event and after... all at the same time of the event... your brain just percieves it happening in the correct sequence.

5) you have the magic in you. <fill in any non-explaination here>.

 

[Malintent]

ah the microwave.. perfect example for me. When I make my coffee in the morning I have a process that involves nuking a cup of water for 1:00. No matter how I prep the rest of my involved coffee making process (it is called a Long Black.. learned it in New Zealand.. think of an Americano made upside-down), I always can turn around and reach for the microwave handle at exactly 1:00.

The beeping sound the thing makes when it is done is so anoying, I fairly quickly became "trained" to time 1 minute exactly in my head while grinding and tamping my espresso for the long black.

 

[barbos]

LCD displays have have two separate things which need to be turned off, LCD matrix and backlight. They are not turned off simultaneously. And peripheral vision is more sensitive to faster changes, that's why you don't see this effect it when you look straight up.