Santacà Maria, Miletto Petrazzini Maria Elena, Agrillo Christian, Wilkinson Anna
Department of General Psychology, University of Padova.
School of Biological and Chemical Science, Queen Mary University of London.
J Comp Psychol. 2019 Nov;133(4):419-427. doi: 10.1037/com0000176. Epub 2019 Mar 21.
Optical illusions have been widely used to compare visual perception among vertebrates because they can reveal how the system is able to adapt to visual input. Sensitivity to visual illusions has never been studied in reptiles. Here, we investigated whether red-footed tortoises, Chelonoidis carbonaria, and bearded dragons, Pogona vitticeps, perceive the Delboeuf illusion. This illusion involves the misperception of the size of a target circle depending upon the context in which it is presented. We adopted the same size discrimination for both species to compare their performance. Animals were presented with two different types of trials. In control trials, they received two different-sized food portions on two plates of the same size. In test trials, they received two same-sized food portions but presented on two different-sized plates. If they perceived the illusion in the same way as humans, we expected them to select the food portion presented on the smaller plate. The tortoises exhibited poor performance in the control trials, which prevented us from drawing any conclusions about their perception of the Delboeuf illusion. In contrast, the bearded dragons selected the larger amount of food in control trials. In test trials, they selected the portion presented on the smaller plate significantly more often than chance, suggesting a human-like sensitivity to the Delboeuf illusion. Our study provides the first evidence of the perception of a visual illusion in a reptile species, suggesting that rather than simply detecting visual input, they interpret sensory information captured by photoreceptors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
视觉错觉已被广泛用于比较脊椎动物的视觉感知，因为它们可以揭示该系统如何适应视觉输入。从未对爬行动物对视觉错觉的敏感性进行过研究。在这里，我们调查了红腿陆龟（Chelonoidis carbonaria）和鬃狮蜥（Pogona vitticeps）是否能感知德勃夫错觉。这种错觉涉及根据目标圆呈现的背景对错觉目标圆大小的错误感知。我们对这两个物种采用相同的大小辨别任务来比较它们的表现。给动物呈现两种不同类型的试验。在对照试验中，它们在两个相同大小的盘子上得到两份不同大小的食物。在测试试验中，它们得到两份相同大小的食物，但放在两个不同大小的盘子上。如果它们以与人类相同的方式感知错觉，我们预期它们会选择放在较小盘子上的食物部分。乌龟在对照试验中的表现不佳，这使我们无法就它们对德勃夫错觉的感知得出任何结论。相比之下，鬃狮蜥在对照试验中选择了更多的食物。在测试试验中，它们选择放在较小盘子上的食物部分的频率明显高于随机水平，这表明它们对德勃夫错觉具有类似人类的敏感性。我们的研究首次提供了爬行动物物种能够感知视觉错觉的证据，这表明它们并非简单地检测视觉输入，而是会解读光感受器捕获的感官信息。（PsycINFO数据库记录（c）2019美国心理学会，保留所有权利）
