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Journal of Comparative Psychology... Nov 2019Researchers and artists have long been interested in visual illusions because they illustrate the interesting, complicated, and constrained ways in which we perceive the...
Researchers and artists have long been interested in visual illusions because they illustrate the interesting, complicated, and constrained ways in which we perceive the world. Although we may not be familiar with the names of the many different visual illusions that exist (e.g., the Necker cube, the Müller-Lyer illusion, and the Hermann grid illusion, to name a few), people with typically functioning will certainly have seen many of these. We have known for centuries that humans perceive these illusions. We have known for the past few decades that nonhuman mammals can perceive these illusions, and very recent work has revealed that birds and fish perceive some of these illusions, though sometimes in a way opposite to how our own species does. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Topics: Animals; Humans; Optical Illusions
PubMed: 31647270
DOI: 10.1037/com0000204 -
Optometry and Vision Science : Official... Nov 2006Dyslexic readers have been found to have a reduced line-motion illusion. This has been interpreted as evidence for an attention deficit of magnocellular origin. We show... (Review)
Review
Dyslexic readers have been found to have a reduced line-motion illusion. This has been interpreted as evidence for an attention deficit of magnocellular origin. We show that this interpretation has severe problems: 1) to link reduced line-motion illusion to attention overlooks other factors, 2) to link the line-motion illusion specifically to the magnocellular system is problematic because the illusion can be obtained with isoluminant stimuli, 3) reduced illusory motion in dyslexic individuals may reflect sensory deficits, and 4) to link dyslexia specifically to the magnocellular system is in general problematic.
Topics: Attention; Dyslexia; Humans; Motion Perception; Optical Illusions; Prognosis
PubMed: 17106412
DOI: 10.1097/01.opx.0000233645.60607.0b -
Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis 2012Subjective estimates of lengths or areas in the visual field depend on the visual contents of the estimated space (filled/empty or Oppel-Kundt illusion). We studied the...
Subjective estimates of lengths or areas in the visual field depend on the visual contents of the estimated space (filled/empty or Oppel-Kundt illusion). We studied the dependence of this phenomenon on the presentation mode (white on black vs. black on white background), and on the figure/ground contrast. We found, as expected, overestimation of the filled part of the figure for both contrast polarities. The expansion effect was found to be an increasing function of the absolute luminance contrast, and was consistently higher for the negative (luminant figures on a dark background) than for the positive polarity. The contrast factor contributes from one-fifth to one-third of the total effect. Possible interpretations in terms of known sensory phenomena (irradiation, lateral interactions) or higher, integrative functions are discussed.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Contrast Sensitivity; Female; Humans; Male; Optical Illusions; Photic Stimulation; Visual Fields; Young Adult
PubMed: 23377271
DOI: 10.55782/ane-2012-1912 -
Neuropsychologia May 2016The Poggendorff illusion refers to the phenomenon that the human brain misperceives a diagonal line as being apparently misaligned once the diagonal line is interrupted...
The Poggendorff illusion refers to the phenomenon that the human brain misperceives a diagonal line as being apparently misaligned once the diagonal line is interrupted by two parallel edges, and the size of illusion is negatively correlated with the angle of interception of the oblique, i.e. the sharper the oblique angle, the larger the illusion. This optical illusion can be produced by both real and illusory contour. In this fMRI study, by parametrically varying the oblique angle, we investigated the shared and specific neural mechanisms underlying the Poggendorff illusion induced by real and illusory contour. At the behavioral level, not only the real but also the illusory contours were capable of inducing significant Poggendorff illusion. The size of illusion induced by the real contour, however, was larger than that induced by the illusory contour. At the neural level, real and illusory contours commonly activated more dorsal visual areas, and the real contours specifically activated more ventral visual areas. More importantly, examinations on the parametric modulation effects of the size of illusion revealed the specific neural mechanisms underlying the Poggendorff illusion induced by the real and the illusory contours, respectively. Left precentral gyrus and right middle occipital cortex were specifically involved in the Poggendorff illusion induced by the real contour. On the other hand, bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) and right lateral occipital complex (LOC) were specifically involved in the Poggendorff illusion induced by the illusory contour. Functional implications of the above findings were further discussed.
Topics: Analysis of Variance; Brain Mapping; Female; Form Perception; Humans; Illusions; Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; Linear Models; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Motor Cortex; Occipital Lobe; Optical Illusions; Orientation; Oxygen; Photic Stimulation; Psychophysics; Young Adult
PubMed: 26956926
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2016.03.005 -
Scientific Reports Jan 2021There is growing interest in how human observers perceive social scenes containing multiple people. Interpersonal distance is a critical feature when appraising these...
There is growing interest in how human observers perceive social scenes containing multiple people. Interpersonal distance is a critical feature when appraising these scenes; proxemic cues are used by observers to infer whether two people are interacting, the nature of their relationship, and the valence of their current interaction. Presently, however, remarkably little is known about how interpersonal distance is encoded within the human visual system. Here we show that the perception of interpersonal distance is distorted by the Müller-Lyer illusion. Participants perceived the distance between two target points to be compressed or expanded depending on whether face pairs were positioned inside or outside the to-be-judged interval. This illusory bias was found to be unaffected by manipulations of face direction. These findings aid our understanding of how human observers perceive interpersonal distance and may inform theoretical accounts of the Müller-Lyer illusion.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Distance Perception; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Optical Illusions; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Size Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 33436801
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-80073-y -
Experimental Brain Research Apr 2018The effects of left and right alignment on the Ebbinghaus illusion were investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, the Ebbinghaus illusion was presented on the...
The effects of left and right alignment on the Ebbinghaus illusion were investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, the Ebbinghaus illusion was presented on the left or right side, and the points of subjective equality (PSE) were measured. Only the central disk of the figure with small inducers was perceived larger when it was positioned on the right side rather than on the left. In Experiments 2 and 3, left, right, and central placement were used to determine if the results of Experiment 1 were caused by a decrease of the illusion on the left side or an increase of the illusion on the right side. There was no difference in the illusion effect between the left and the center; however, the illusion effect increased when the figure was presented on the right side. These results suggest that a hemispheric asymmetry for global and local spatial attention influences the laterality of the Ebbinghaus illusion.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Functional Laterality; Humans; Optical Illusions; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Space Perception; Young Adult
PubMed: 29368080
DOI: 10.1007/s00221-018-5168-8 -
Attention, Perception & Psychophysics Feb 2020Some types of object features, such as color, shape, or location, can be processed separately within the visual system, requiring that they be correctly "bound" to a...
Some types of object features, such as color, shape, or location, can be processed separately within the visual system, requiring that they be correctly "bound" to a single object via attentional selection of a subset of visual information. Forcing selection to spread too widely can cause an illusion where these features misbind to objects, creating illusory objects that were never present. Here, we present a novel display that produces a robust color-location misbinding illusion that we call foveal gravity (viewable at https://osf.io/2bndg/). When observers selected only a set of colored objects, colors were largely perceived in their correct locations. When observers additionally selected objects in the far periphery, colors in the near periphery migrated closer to the fovea on over 35% of trials. We speculate that foveal gravity occurs because locations closer to the fovea are more likely to defeat more peripheral locations in competitive interactions to "win" the task-relevant color.
Topics: Adolescent; Adult; Attention; Color Perception; Female; Fovea Centralis; Humans; Male; Optical Illusions; Photic Stimulation; Young Adult
PubMed: 31820280
DOI: 10.3758/s13414-019-01853-x -
Archivos de La Sociedad Espanola de... Dec 2016
Topics: History, 20th Century; Ophthalmology; Optical Illusions; United States
PubMed: 27025946
DOI: 10.1016/j.oftal.2016.02.016 -
Neuroreport Dec 2022The Sander illusion and the horizontal-vertical (H-V) illusion are both size and orientation geometric-optical illusions. The Sander geometric figures can be simply...
OBJECTIVE
The Sander illusion and the horizontal-vertical (H-V) illusion are both size and orientation geometric-optical illusions. The Sander geometric figures can be simply regarded as being made up of surrounding frames and inner targeted line segments. Similarly, H-V illusory geometric figures are made up of the targeted line segments. The role of surrounding frames and inner targeted line segments in the perception and cognition of geometric-optical illusions is not well understood.
METHODS
The time course of event-related potentials (ERP) and the ERP-based standardized low-resolution electromagnetic tomography (sLORETA) source localization were investigated in the Sander illusion and the H-V illusion, which had the same length as the targeted line segments, respectively. The P1, N1, P2, N2 and P3 components of the ERP were focused and measured.
RESULTS
The ERP results demonstrated that the existence of surrounding frames in the Sander illusions-induced significant alterations in the P1, N1, P2, N2 and P3 components, compared with the H-V illusion without surrounding frames. In the Sander illusion, different tilted line segments and surrounding frames resulted in significant differences in the P2, N2 and P3 components. The sLORETA results also demonstrated brain activities of source localization as a function of the surrounding frames and the tilted inner line segments.
CONCLUSIONS
These findings implicate that the perceptual and cognitive processes of the geometric-optical illusions are correlated to the surrounding frames/background, as well as the orientation/direction of inner targeted line segments in geometric figures.
Topics: Humans; Optical Illusions; Illusions; Evoked Potentials
PubMed: 36367794
DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0000000000001843 -
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review Jun 2017Specific abnormalities of vision in schizophrenia have been observed to affect high-level and some low-level integration mechanisms, suggesting that people with... (Review)
Review
Specific abnormalities of vision in schizophrenia have been observed to affect high-level and some low-level integration mechanisms, suggesting that people with schizophrenia may experience anomalies across different stages in the visual system affecting either early or late processing or both. Here, we review the research into visual illusion perception in schizophrenia and the issues which previous research has faced. One general finding that emerged from the literature is that those with schizophrenia are mostly immune to the effects of high-level illusory displays, but this effect is not consistent across all low-level illusions. The present review suggests that this resistance is due to the weakening of top-down perceptual mechanisms and may be relevant to the understanding of symptoms of visual distortion rather than hallucinations as previously thought.
Topics: Humans; Illusions; Optical Illusions; Schizophrenia; Visual Perception
PubMed: 27730532
DOI: 10.3758/s13423-016-1168-5