Other
Scientific paper
May 1965
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1965natur.206..745g&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 206, Issue 4985, pp. 745-746 (1965).
Other
Scientific paper
PERHAPS it is difficult to demonstrate primary constancy scaling independently of the distortion illusions, but its effects are not limited to plane figures. For example, the apparent size of the Moon is not a simple function of its apparent distance-when low on the horizon it looks both large and near, which contravenes the classical Emmett's Law, and demands some kind of size scaling which is not locked to apparent distance. The worry about lack of perception of depth in luminous plane figures having exaggerated perspective but which give illusory distortions was in fact expressed by myself, in the (unpublished) paper cited by Humphrey and Morgan. If illusions do occur in figures not seen in depth though the countermanding depth-cues are removed, it would have to be supposed that primary constancy can work like a `super releaser' (as found in ethology), working beyond the normal range at which it is useful. This is quite possible, but if true it would make precise predictions difficult. On present evidence, however, it does not occur: Measuring the apparent depth in luminous Muller-Lyer figures of various fin angles, with the technique briefly described1, I found that the apparent depth of the illusion figures correlates extremely closely with the measured illusions for each angle tested, over the full range of possible angles of the fins. The distortion and the apparent depth of the figures are both reduced for extreme angles, when normal perspective breaks down. To argue that the relation discovered between apparent depth and the illusions is fortuitous is to fly in the face of a correlation coefficient better than 0.9. There are other and quite different predictions which follow from the theory, and it is compatible with the curious finding that peoples who live in environments largely free of right angular corners and parallel lines, such as the Zulus who live in a `circular culture' of round huts, do not suffer these illusions to anything like the normal extent2,3.
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