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Part II: Page 4 of 10 |
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The screen would then show an entrance to a house filled with snow. When asked what he saw, the patient said he saw nothing. If he was asked to point to an image that matched what he saw, he would point at the snow shovel. Asked for an explanation for why he picked the snow shovel, the patient could not explain it. |
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If both images where shown at the same time and the patient were asked what he saw, he would answer: ”The leg of a chicken”. If he then was asked to point with his left hand to what he saw, he would point at the snow shovel. Asked for an explanation he would invent an explanation, e.g. that the snowshovel were meant for removing chicken shit. |
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In an experiment where the patient were instructed to do what he was told at the screen, the right hemisphere were told to leave the room. When he was asked, as he was moving towards the door, why he was leaving, he would answer (with his left hemisphere) with a lie, e.g. that he was leaving to get a cup of water.
What is noteworthy is that the patient himself or the friends of the patient had no feeling that he was walking around with two identities, which the experiments clearly showed that he did. Both identities, i.e. both the right and left hemisphere, were able to understand the experiment and solve the tasks, but the right hemisphere was unable to use speech for communication, instead it could draw what it saw. When one identity was used, the other one was in a kind of “stand by”. If Roger Sperry had not decided to investigate the matter, the personality split would not have been discovered. The behaviour that revealed the personality split were only discovered because of the ingenineous experiment settings, where it was revealed that it was the left hemisphere of the patient that concealed the suspect behaviour, which would otherwise reveal that there were infact two identities. |