School of Optometry & Vision Science, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Perception. 2023 Jul;52(7):459-483. doi: 10.1177/03010066231175014. Epub 2023 Jun 19.
The Ebbinghaus and Delboeuf illusions affect the perceived size of a target circle depending on the size and proximity of circular inducers or a ring. Converging evidence suggests that these illusions are driven by interactions between contours mediated by their cortical distance in primary visual cortex. We tested the effect of cortical distance on these illusions using two methods: First, we manipulated retinal distance between target and inducers in a two-interval forced choice design, finding that targets appeared larger with a closer surround. Next, we predicted that targets presented peripherally should appear larger due to cortical magnification. Hence, we tested the illusion strength when positioning the stimuli at various eccentricities, with results supporting this hypothesis. We calculated estimated cortical distances between illusion elements in each experiment and used these estimates to compare the relationship between cortical distance and illusion strength across our experiments. In a final experiment, we modified the Delboeuf illusion to test whether the influence of the inducers/annuli in this illusion is influenced by an inhibitory surround. We found evidence that an additional outer ring makes targets appear smaller compared to a single-ring condition, suggesting that near and distal contours have antagonistic effects on perceived target size.
艾宾浩斯和德尔博夫错觉会影响目标圆的感知大小，具体取决于圆形诱导物或环的大小和接近程度。越来越多的证据表明，这些错觉是由初级视觉皮层中轮廓之间的相互作用驱动的，这些相互作用是由它们的皮质距离介导的。我们使用两种方法来测试皮质距离对这些错觉的影响：首先，我们在两间隔强制选择设计中操纵目标和诱导物之间的视网膜距离，发现目标周围的距离越近，目标看起来就越大。接下来，我们预测由于皮层放大，当目标出现在外周时应该会显得更大。因此，我们在不同的偏心率下测试了刺激的错觉强度，结果支持了这一假设。我们计算了每个实验中错觉元素之间的估计皮质距离，并使用这些估计值来比较我们实验中皮质距离和错觉强度之间的关系。在最后的实验中，我们修改了德尔博夫错觉，以测试这种错觉中诱导物/环的影响是否受到抑制性环绕的影响。我们发现证据表明，与单环条件相比，额外的外环使目标看起来更小，这表明近端和远端轮廓对感知目标大小有拮抗作用。
