Most of us may call these optical illusions, but some experts may disagree to an extent. NYU psychology and data science professor Pascal Wallisch, for one, differentiates optical illusions from visual illusions.
In his explanation, Pascal writes that the former involves light’s interaction with matter, creating a reality-distorting perception. Meanwhile, the latter involves the brain’s visual system making educated guesses.
For example, Wallisch described the pencil-in-a-glass-of-water trick, where it may look bent when submerged.
“The pencil is not actually bent – it is perfectly straight, but immersing it in water (which is an optically denser medium than air) gives the appearance of a kink,” he stated.
Regarding visual illusions, Wallisch says it is more physiological than physical. Since vision is about gathering information to guide action, our brains connect the dots to make what we see easier to understand.
In his example, Wallisch used the Scintillating Starburst image, which appears to show rays of light emanating from the center. In reality, the streaks tend to appear because of the gray background behind the black image.
One of the most infamous illusions in recent years is “the dress.” The image went viral in 2015, prompting people worldwide to debate whether it was gold, white, black, or blue.
According to Live Science, people who thought the dress was photographed in daylight or shadow saw it as gold and white. Meanwhile, those who thought it was photographed in artificial light saw a blue-and-black dress.
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Wallisch made a strong analogy in his piece when he said perception works like auto-correct. It isn’t always accurate, but it tries to reach an acceptable enough conclusion to keep the conversation going.
“Your perceptions are the end product of many cognitive processing steps. They might or might not correspond to objective reality, so one might not necessarily want to take them at face value,” he stated.
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