The Oxford compendium of visual illusions

Description

Visual illusions cut across academic divides and popular interests: on the one hand, illusions provide entertainment as curious tricks of the eye; on the other hand, scientific research related to illusory phenomena has given generations of scientists and artists deep insights into the brain and principles of mind and consciousness. Numerous thinkers (including Aristotle, Descartes, Da Vinci, Escher, Goethe, Galileo, Helmholtz, Maxwell, Newton, and Wittgenstein) have been lured by the apparent simplicity of illusions and the promise that illusory phenomena can elucidate the puzzling relationship between the physical world and our perceptual reality. Over the past thirty years, advances in imaging and electrophysiology has dramatically expanded the range of illusions and enabled new forms of analysis, thereby creating new and exciting ways to consider how the brain constructs our perceptual world. The Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions is a collection of over one hundred chapters about illusions, displayed and discussed by the researchers who invented and conducted research on the illusions. Chapters include full-color images, associated videos, and extensive references. The book is divided into eleven sections: first, a presentation of general history and viewpoints on illusions, followed by sections on geometric, color, motion, space, faces, and cross-category illusions. The book will be of interest to vision scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, physicists, philosophers, artists, designers, advertisers, and educators curious about applied aspects of visual perception and the brain. Content: Cover The Oxford Compendium of Visual Illusions Copyright Contents Contributors How to Use the Website Introduction Part I: Introductory General Chapters 1. Early History of Illusions 2. Cross-Cultural Studies of Illusions 3. Visual Illusion in a Comparative Perspective 4. An Analysis of Theoretical Approaches to Geometrical-Optical Illusions 5. Visual Illusions in Action 6. Motion Illusions in Man and Machine 7. The Visual World as Illusion: The Ones We Know and the Ones We Don't 8. Visual Illusions? 9. Why the Concept of "Visual Illusions" Is Misleading 10. Where Have All the Illusions Gone? A Critique of the Concept of IllusionPart II: Geometrical 11. Weighted Positional Averaging in the Illusions of the Müller-Lyer Type 12. The Bar-Cross-Ellipse Illusion 13. The Spinning Ellipse Speed Illusion 14. The Ames Window Illusion and Its Variations 15. Three-Dimensional Müller-Lyer Illusion: Theoretical and Practical Implications 16. Why Do Hills Look So Steep? 17. "Shape from Smear": An Illusion of 3D Shape, Made by Finger-Painting With Noise 18. Geometric-Optical Illusions Under Isoluminance? 19. The Picture Surface Illusion: 3D Biases 2D20. Cast Shadow Illusions 21. The Leaning Tower Illusion 22. The Invisible Saddle, or the Cap-or-Cup Illusion 23. Symmetry and Uprightness in Visually Perceived Forms 24. The Bathtub Illusion 25. The Pitchroom Illusion: How High Is Up? 26. Geometric Illusions in the Human Face and Body 27. Dynamic Illusory Size Contrast: Enhanced Relative Size Effects Due to Stimulus Motion 28. Size Contrast and Assimilation in the Delboeuf and Ebbinghaus Illusions 29. The Occlusion, Configural Shape, and Shrinkage Illusions 30. Reverse-Perspective Art and Objects-Illusions in Depth and Motion31. The New Moon Illusion 32. Geometrical Errors Are the Cost of Maintaining the Luminance Contrast Polarity 33. Antigravity Slopes: A New Type of Visual Illusion 34. The Geometrical-Optical Illusions of J. J. Oppel 35. Oppel-Kundt Illusion 36. The Shifted-Chessboard Pattern as Paradigm of the Exegesis of Geometrical-Optical Illusions Part III: Brightness/Lightness/Color 37. A Layered Experience of Lightness and Color 38. Color and Luminance: Afterimages, Combinations, and Flicker 39. The White Effect 40. The Dungeon Illusion41. The Contrast Illusion 42. Illusory Color Spread from Apparent Motion 43. The Reversed Contrast Necker Cube 44. Changing the Chevreul Illusion by a Background Luminance Ramp 45. The Curved Grid Non-Illusions: Eliminating Hermann's Spots and Lingelbach's Scintillation 46. The Staircase Gelb Illusion 47. The Breathing Light Illusion: Illusory Size and Brightness Variation Induced by Motion 48. Large Shift in Brightness Induced by Motion in Context 49. The Chromatic Mach Card 50. Color Assimilation 51. When Light Looks Like Paint