Bio-inspired Digital Sensing (BIDS) Lab, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
School of Biosciences, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
Proc Biol Sci. 2017 Nov 29;284(1867). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.2278.
How different visual systems process images and make perceptual errors can inform us about cognitive and visual processes. One of the strongest geometric errors in perception is a misperception of size depending on the size of surrounding objects, known as the Ebbinghaus or Titchener illusion. The ability to perceive the Ebbinghaus illusion appears to vary dramatically among vertebrate species, and even populations, but this may depend on whether the viewing distance is restricted. We tested whether honeybees perceive contextual size illusions, and whether errors in perception of size differed under restricted and unrestricted viewing conditions. When the viewing distance was unrestricted, there was an effect of context on size perception and thus, similar to humans, honeybees perceived contrast size illusions. However, when the viewing distance was restricted, bees were able to judge absolute size accurately and did not succumb to visual illusions, despite differing contextual information. Our results show that accurate size perception depends on viewing conditions, and thus may explain the wide variation in previously reported findings across species. These results provide insight into the evolution of visual mechanisms across vertebrate and invertebrate taxa, and suggest convergent evolution of a visual processing solution.
不同的视觉系统如何处理图像并产生感知错误，可以为我们了解认知和视觉过程提供信息。感知中的一个最强的几何错误是大小的错觉，这取决于周围物体的大小，这种错觉被称为艾宾浩斯或蒂奇纳错觉。在脊椎动物物种中，甚至在种群中，感知艾宾浩斯错觉的能力似乎有很大的差异，但这可能取决于观察距离是否受限。我们测试了蜜蜂是否能感知上下文大小错觉，以及在受限和不受限的观察条件下，对大小的感知是否存在差异。当观察距离不受限时，上下文对大小感知有影响，因此，与人类一样，蜜蜂也能感知对比大小错觉。然而，当观察距离受到限制时，蜜蜂能够准确地判断绝对大小，并且不会屈服于视觉错觉，尽管存在不同的上下文信息。我们的研究结果表明，准确的大小感知取决于观察条件，因此可能解释了以前在不同物种中报告的发现存在广泛差异的原因。这些结果为我们提供了关于视觉机制在脊椎动物和无脊椎动物中的进化的见解，并表明了视觉处理解决方案的趋同进化。
