THE ORBISON ILLUSION: The squares in the grid should appear to be distorted. This effect was first described by German psychologist Walter Ehrenstein in 1925.
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
THE EBBINGHAUS ILLUSION: Even though both are the same size, the red circle on the left appears larger that the one on the right. It was discovered by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
THE ASSIMILATION ILLUSION: The bars on the left appear do not appear as bright as the thicker bars on the right. This effect was first described by American psychologist Harry Helson in 1963.
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
CONTRASTING ELLIPSES:
The black ellipse on the left looks larger because of the more noticeable difference between its color and that of the background. This illusion was first described by psychologist Edward J....[More]
CONTRASTING ELLIPSES:
The black ellipse on the left looks larger because of the more noticeable difference between its color and that of the background. This illusion was first described by psychologist Edward J. Robinson of Boston University in 1954.
[Less]
[Link to this slide]
COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
STATIC BULGING GRID: The center of the grid appears to bulge, bowing outwards. This illusion appears for the first time in the May issue of Cognitive Science (Changizi et al., 2008).
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
TILTING RECTANGLE:
The greater contrast portion (left side) of the rectangle at the center of the picture appears tilted toward you. This illusion appears for the first time in the May issue of Cognitive Science (Changizi et al., 2008)....[More]
TILTING RECTANGLE:
The greater contrast portion (left side) of the rectangle at the center of the picture appears tilted toward you. This illusion appears for the first time in the May issue of Cognitive Science (Changizi et al., 2008).
[Less]
[Link to this slide]
COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
BULGING GRID: Moving you face toward the image gives it the appearance of bulging. This illusion was first described by Chris Foster and Eric L. Altschuler in 2001.
[Link to this slide]
MOVING OPTIC STREAKS: The blurs appear to be in motion. Those with the longer tails seem to be moving faster. This illusion appears for the first time in the May issue of Cognitive Science (Changizi et al., 2008).
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
OPTIC BLURS: If you bob your head toward the center of this image, the blurred markings will begin flowing outward “too fast.” This illusion was created by Mark Changizi in 2003.
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
FLOWING LUMINANCE: Bobbing your head toward the center leads to the bright patch expanding outward. Moving away does the opposite. This illusion was created by Mark Changizi in 2003.
[Link to this slide] COURTESY OF MARK CHANGIZI
YES! Send me a free issue of Scientific American with no obligation to continue the subscription. If I like it, I will be billed for the one-year subscription.
I've gotta call snake oil on this one. The Changizi all appear as just what they are to me. Nothing bulges, nothing moves. I suspect he got a big grant to make them and just 'cuz he says that's what ppl are supposed to see, they do. So, perhaps, he won a grant on the power of suggestion, not illusion? Mark, go to night school and get better photoshop skills if you're going to continue with this, I found your illusions passe and your theories on color a bit protracted.
You possibly not up to the end are of value the work performed by you. Nevertheless, your article as is impossible by the way. Also it is very well put in the concept developed by me. Possibly, subjects of my site (http://www.spast.ru), on which work is presented (http://www.spast.ru/book/Inform/Inform.htm), can seem to you a little attractive if you wish to familiarise with it. Nevertheless, it is very pleasant, that in the future works to me on whom will refer.... Instead of to convince only to the thoughts. Your experience is important, not only for me but also for a science as a whole.
By the way, whether you studied this mechanism at primacies? I think, that degree of a prediction at them should be even above, than at the person - using and other more developed mechanisms.
President SPAST
Krivomaz J.A.
It's not snake oil. If done right, the brighter center should appear to expand outward in brightness. But this is also not an illusion. The nearer an object is, the brighter it is, and vice versa. Light waves, like gravity, are proportional to the square of the distance from one point to another. As you approach a point source of light, the number of photons reaching your eye from that given point increases as well. The only illusion, if it could be called that, comes from the fact that there is a gradation. In that respect it works like Christmas chase lights, because our eye will follow a single shade or color as if it were a fixed object. In this case, it's neighboring shades that are changing, which makes one ring appear to "move" outward as our eyes rapidly (and PHYSICALLY) approach. Incidentally, a simple zooming animation (wherein all the shades remain constant, but we make them larger), will not produce the same effect, because there must be a physical separation. A camera panning (not zooming, but actually moving) quickly to or away from this piece (on computer or paper) will produce the same effect.
Incidentally, image 6 of 10 has the same root explanation as the sphere with the center that appears to brighten outward upon a fast head bob forward, or physical approach of the eyes.
The reason the lighter part of the rectangle appears tilted toward us is because this really is how light from physical objects works. As you approach a point source of light, the number of photons reaching your eye from that given point increases as well. Thus, we know on some level, (regardless of whether it is conscious or unconscious, the physics remains the same) that an object of uniform shade and hue will be "dimmer at a distance", and relatively brighter up close.
This is similar to the "illusion" of 3D borders in windows. On your screen, look at any button or 3D frame, or your slider bar to the right of this page (assuming yours is 3D). The left and top edges will be light, and the right and bottom will be dark. That makes it come "out" at you. If you reverse this, the object will appear to be sunken in. The left or right components are really arbitrary, and can be shifted. It's the top and bottom edges that produce the illusion. Why? Since 99.99% of our direct lighting comes from above, our brains have come to expect this, and interpret objects accordingly.
Your theory, Mark, makes me blush! It is from a typically male perspective, because it leaves out the main evolutionary root of our colour vision: FOOD foraging! Which, for our nimble-fingered primate forefathers, must have been fruits & berries and the like, up in those ancestral trees! Females may well have been the main fruit pickers, and their much higher colour sensitivity bears witness to this survival factor. (Colour blindness is twenty times more common in males, who, in Neandertal times, found their own survival niche through hunting, when there was not much fruit picking possible, due to the Ice Ages.) I am constantly amused when I watch men at parties eating nothing but brownish-black meat slabs, thereby avoiding essential phytonuntrients from plant pigments. Eating a salad is considered 'unmanly'! Only when prostate cancer often strikes in middle age, tomato red lykopene seems to get back into the picture... For a science-based , yet light-hearted approach to our daily diet, view Colour Eating on youthevity.com
"demonstrated that the shapes of letters in 100 writing systems reflect common ones seen in nature: Take the letter "A"it looks like a mountain, he says. And "Y" might remind one of a tree with branches. He also showed that across different languages most characters take three strokes to write out. That's because, he says, three is the highest quantity a person's brain can perceive without resorting to counting."
Firstly, writing systems arose using the rebus principle whereby pictures of natural things were selected to represent sounds that were similar to their names in language. It was not so much the selection of natural forms per se but the phonographic rebus principle that drove the use of pictures, and the fact that only natural forms can be depicted by pictures. All current writing systems evolved by graphical simplification of the pictures.
If you look closely you will see that the letters of the Roman and modern alphabets now bear almost no resemblance to pictures. Their linear forms arise from the execution of writing, simplicity for economy and most of the remaining attributes of shape arise logically from the simplest kinds of distinguishable graphical features.
Graphical features that arise for perceptual facility include symmetry and orientation to the horizontal and vertical axes.
I have this all worked out logically and you do not need to do any experiments.
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6 Comments
Add CommentI've gotta call snake oil on this one. The Changizi all appear as just what they are to me. Nothing bulges, nothing moves. I suspect he got a big grant to make them and just 'cuz he says that's what ppl are supposed to see, they do. So, perhaps, he won a grant on the power of suggestion, not illusion? Mark, go to night school and get better photoshop skills if you're going to continue with this, I found your illusions passe and your theories on color a bit protracted.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou possibly not up to the end are of value the work performed by you. Nevertheless, your article as is impossible by the way. Also it is very well put in the concept developed by me. Possibly, subjects of my site (http://www.spast.ru), on which work is presented (http://www.spast.ru/book/Inform/Inform.htm), can seem to you a little attractive if you wish to familiarise with it. Nevertheless, it is very pleasant, that in the future works to me on whom will refer.... Instead of to convince only to the thoughts. Your experience is important, not only for me but also for a science as a whole.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBy the way, whether you studied this mechanism at primacies? I think, that degree of a prediction at them should be even above, than at the person - using and other more developed mechanisms.
President SPAST
Krivomaz J.A.
P.S.
(Forgive for machine translation)
It's not snake oil. If done right, the brighter center should appear to expand outward in brightness. But this is also not an illusion. The nearer an object is, the brighter it is, and vice versa. Light waves, like gravity, are proportional to the square of the distance from one point to another. As you approach a point source of light, the number of photons reaching your eye from that given point increases as well. The only illusion, if it could be called that, comes from the fact that there is a gradation. In that respect it works like Christmas chase lights, because our eye will follow a single shade or color as if it were a fixed object. In this case, it's neighboring shades that are changing, which makes one ring appear to "move" outward as our eyes rapidly (and PHYSICALLY) approach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIncidentally, a simple zooming animation (wherein all the shades remain constant, but we make them larger), will not produce the same effect, because there must be a physical separation. A camera panning (not zooming, but actually moving) quickly to or away from this piece (on computer or paper) will produce the same effect.
Incidentally, image 6 of 10 has the same root explanation as the sphere with the center that appears to brighten outward upon a fast head bob forward, or physical approach of the eyes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe reason the lighter part of the rectangle appears tilted toward us is because this really is how light from physical objects works. As you approach a point source of light, the number of photons reaching your eye from that given point increases as well. Thus, we know on some level, (regardless of whether it is conscious or unconscious, the physics remains the same) that an object of uniform shade and hue will be "dimmer at a distance", and relatively brighter up close.
This is similar to the "illusion" of 3D borders in windows. On your screen, look at any button or 3D frame, or your slider bar to the right of this page (assuming yours is 3D). The left and top edges will be light, and the right and bottom will be dark. That makes it come "out" at you. If you reverse this, the object will appear to be sunken in. The left or right components are really arbitrary, and can be shifted. It's the top and bottom edges that produce the illusion. Why? Since 99.99% of our direct lighting comes from above, our brains have come to expect this, and interpret objects accordingly.
Your theory, Mark, makes me blush! It is from a typically male perspective, because it leaves out the main evolutionary root of our colour vision: FOOD foraging! Which, for our nimble-fingered primate forefathers, must have been fruits & berries and the like, up in those ancestral trees! Females may well have been the main fruit pickers, and their much higher colour sensitivity bears witness to this survival factor. (Colour blindness is twenty times more common in males, who, in Neandertal times, found their own survival niche through hunting, when there was not much fruit picking possible, due to the Ice Ages.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am constantly amused when I watch men at parties eating nothing but brownish-black meat slabs, thereby avoiding essential phytonuntrients from plant pigments. Eating a salad is considered 'unmanly'! Only when prostate cancer often strikes in middle age, tomato red lykopene seems to get back into the picture...
For a science-based , yet light-hearted approach to our daily diet, view Colour Eating on youthevity.com
"demonstrated that the shapes of letters in 100 writing systems reflect common ones seen in nature: Take the letter "A"it looks like a mountain, he says. And "Y" might remind one of a tree with branches. He also showed that across different languages most characters take three strokes to write out. That's because, he says, three is the highest quantity a person's brain can perceive without resorting to counting."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirstly, writing systems arose using the rebus principle whereby pictures of natural things were selected to represent sounds that were similar to their names in language. It was not so much the selection of natural forms per se but the phonographic rebus principle that drove the use of pictures, and the fact that only natural forms can be depicted by pictures. All current writing systems evolved by graphical simplification of the pictures.
If you look closely you will see that the letters of the Roman and modern alphabets now bear almost no resemblance to pictures. Their linear forms arise from the execution of writing, simplicity for economy and most of the remaining attributes of shape arise logically from the simplest kinds of distinguishable graphical features.
Graphical features that arise for perceptual facility include symmetry and orientation to the horizontal and vertical axes.
I have this all worked out logically and you do not need to do any experiments.