A Comparison of Visual Tilt Illusions Measured by the Techniques of Vertical Setting, Parallel Matching, and Dot Alignment

Wenderoth, Peter; Parkinson, Alan F.; White, Dennis

doi:10.1068/p080047

Cited by 33 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…This possibility is consistent with the literature on anchor effects, which are produced when a spatial target is encoded inaccurately and memory is biased toward a salient location or frame of reference (Nelson & Chaiklin, 1980;Sadalla, Burroughs, & Staplin, 1980;Schiano & Tversky, 1992;Tversky, 1981;Wenderoth, Parkinson, & White, 1979). Both possibilities would ensure that offcenter objects are coded in memory on the appropriate side ofthe front or back pole and would provide a mechanism for maintaining high discriminability among locations near these poles.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Parsing surrounding space into regions

1995

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 75%

Parsing surrounding space into regions

1995

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“…When inducing and test lines converge and abut to form an acute angle, the lines phenomenally repulse each other in the orientation domain, an effect known as tilt contrast or acute-angle expansion. This distortion is generally reported to peak at small angles, followed by a long decline; the effect is maximized if the inducing line is either vertical or horizontal (e.g., Blakemore, Carpenter, & Georgeson, 1970;Carpenter & Blakemore, 1973; see also Bouma & Andriessen, 1970;Wenderoth, Parkinson, & White, 1979). Although the specific physiological locus of tilt-eontrast effects has been the subject of some debate (see Howard, 1982), these distortions have long been most commonly attributed to the tuning characteristics of orientation-specific cortical cells in the visual system and to lateral inhibitory interactions that occur between them (Carpenter & Blakemore, 1973; see also Blakemore, Carpenter, & Georgeson, 1970;Wenderoth, O'Connor, & Johnson, 1986).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Structure and strategy in encoding simplified graphs

Schiano

Tversky

1992

Mem Cogn

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Tversky and found a systematic bias toward the 45 0 line in memory for the slopes of identical lines when embedded in graphs, but not in maps, suggesting the use of a cognitive reference frame specifically for encoding meaningful graphs. The present experiments explore this issue further using the linear configurations alone as stimuli. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that perception and immediate memory for the slope of a test line within orthogonal "axes" are predictable from purely structural considerations. In Experiments 3 and 4, subjects were instructed to use a diagonal-reference strategy in viewing the stimuli, which were descrfbed as "graphs" only in Experiment 3. Results for both studies showed the diagonal bias previously found only for graphs. This pattern provides converging evidence for the diagonal as a cognitive reference frame in encoding linear graphs, and demonstrates that even in highly simplified displays, strategic factors can produce encoding biases not predictable solely from stimulus structure alone.

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“…These 19th century investigations were, however, descriptive rather than experimental, and the interpretations, speculative. Despite numerous modern studies (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15), the phenomenon of angle misperception has never been explained.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Why are angles misperceived?

Nundy

Lotto²,

Coppola³

et al. 2000

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Although it has long been apparent that observers tend to overestimate the magnitude of acute angles and underestimate obtuse ones, there is no consensus about why such distortions are seen. Geometrical modeling combined with psychophysical testing of human subjects indicates that these misperceptions are the result of an empirical strategy that resolves the inherent ambiguity of angular stimuli by generating percepts of the past significance of the stimulus rather than the geometry of its retinal projection.T he fact that the subtense of any acute angle is seen as being somewhat larger than the measured angle of the stimulus, whereas the subtense of any obtuse angle is seen as being somewhat smaller, was first reported by Wundt (1) and subsequently by both Hering (2) and Helmholtz (3), all of whom surmised that these distortions might underlie some of the classical geometrical illusions (4). These 19th century investigations were, however, descriptive rather than experimental, and the interpretations, speculative. Despite numerous modern studies (5-15), the phenomenon of angle misperception has never been explained.Here we provide evidence that the systematic misperception of angle subtense is the consequence of a radically empirical strategy of perception in which the angle seen is determined by the relative frequency of the possible sources of angle projections that observers have experienced. The biological rationale for this strategy is a solution to the problem posed by the inevitable ambiguity of angular stimuli. The inability of an angle projected onto a plane to specify uniquely the source is illustrated in Fig. 1. Indeed, because space is divisible without limit, the number of possible real-world sources underlying a given retinal projection is infinite.Because the well being of an observer depends on appropriate interactions with the sources of visual stimuli, the ambiguity of retinal images has long been regarded as a central problem in vision (16). Recent studies of simultaneous brightness contrast (17,18), Mach bands (19,20),, and the perception of color (22) have all suggested that this dilemma is solved by an empirical strategy in which retinal activation triggers associations (percepts) determined by the relative frequencies of the possible sources of the stimulus in past experience. A limitation in validating this concept of vision has been the practical difficulty of quantifying the frequency distribution of the real-world sources underlying the various categories of visual experience. (This problem has also been an obstacle to psychologists who have sought to model perception in terms of Bayes' decision theorem; see ref. 23 for a recent review.) Examining the perception of oriented lines circumvents this obstacle in that the frequency distribution of the possible sources of a given retinal projection-for example, the subtense of the typical source of a given angle projected on the retina-can be computed by geometrical principles, thus providing a more concrete basis for predicting perceptual...

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A Comparison of Visual Tilt Illusions Measured by the Techniques of Vertical Setting, Parallel Matching, and Dot Alignment

Cited by 33 publications

References 32 publications

Parsing surrounding space into regions

Parsing surrounding space into regions

Structure and strategy in encoding simplified graphs

Why are angles misperceived?

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