Feng Lynna C, Chouinard Philippe A, Howell Tiffani J, Bennett Pauleen C
School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University, P.O. Box 199, Bendigo, VIC, 3552, Australia.
Psychon Bull Rev. 2017 Apr;24(2):262-276. doi: 10.3758/s13423-016-1133-3.
In humans, geometrical illusions are thought to reflect mechanisms that are usually helpful for seeing the world in a predictable manner. These mechanisms deceive us given the right set of circumstances, correcting visual input where a correction is not necessary. Investigations of non-human animals' susceptibility to geometrical illusions have yielded contradictory results, suggesting that the underlying mechanisms with which animals see the world may differ across species. In this review, we first collate studies showing that different species are susceptible to specific illusions in the same or reverse direction as humans. Based on a careful assessment of these findings, we then propose several ecological and anatomical factors that may affect how a species perceives illusory stimuli. We also consider the usefulness of this information for determining whether sight in different species might be more similar to human sight, being influenced by contextual information, or to how machines process and transmit information as programmed. Future testing in animals could provide new theoretical insights by focusing on establishing dissociations between stimuli that may or may not alter perception in a particular species. This information could improve our understanding of the mechanisms behind illusions, but also provide insight into how sight is subjectively experienced by different animals, and the degree to which vision is innate versus acquired, which is difficult to examine in humans.
在人类中，几何错觉被认为反映了一些机制，这些机制通常有助于以可预测的方式看待世界。在适当的情况下，这些机制会欺骗我们，在不需要校正的地方校正视觉输入。对非人类动物对几何错觉的易感性的研究产生了相互矛盾的结果，这表明动物看待世界的潜在机制可能因物种而异。在这篇综述中，我们首先整理了一些研究，这些研究表明不同物种对与人类相同或相反方向的特定错觉敏感。在对这些发现进行仔细评估的基础上，我们接着提出了几个可能影响物种如何感知错觉刺激的生态和解剖学因素。我们还考虑了这些信息对于确定不同物种的视觉是否可能更类似于人类视觉（受上下文信息影响），或者更类似于机器按程序处理和传输信息的方式的有用性。未来对动物的测试可以通过专注于确定可能改变或不改变特定物种感知的刺激之间的分离来提供新的理论见解。这些信息不仅可以增进我们对错觉背后机制的理解，还可以深入了解不同动物如何主观体验视觉，以及视觉在多大程度上是天生的还是后天习得的，而这在人类中很难进行研究。
