Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 425 S. University Ave, Stephen A. Levin Bldg., Philadelphia, PA, 19104-6241, USA.
Department of Philosophy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2024 Aug;86(6):1923-1937. doi: 10.3758/s13414-024-02925-3. Epub 2024 Jul 29.
The visual system adapts to a wide range of visual features, from lower-level features like color and motion to higher-level features like causality and, perhaps, number. According to some, adaptation is a strictly perceptual phenomenon, such that the presence of adaptation licenses the claim that a feature is truly perceptual in nature. Given the theoretical importance of claims about adaptation, then, it is important to understand exactly when the visual system does and does not exhibit adaptation. Here, we take as a case study one specific kind of adaptation: visual adaptation to size. Supported by evidence from four experiments, we argue that, despite robust effects of size adaptation in the lab, (1) size adaptation effects are phenomenologically underwhelming (in some cases, hardly appreciable at all), (2) some effects of size adaptation appear contradictory, and difficult to explain given current theories of size adaptation, and (3) prior studies on size adaptation may have failed to isolate size as the adapted dimension. Ultimately, we argue that while there is evidence to license the claim that size adaptation is genuine, size adaptation is a puzzling and poorly understood phenomenon.
视觉系统适应广泛的视觉特征，从颜色和运动等较低层次的特征到因果关系和可能的数字等较高层次的特征。根据一些人的说法，适应是一种严格的知觉现象，因此适应的存在允许声称某个特征本质上是知觉的。鉴于关于适应的说法具有重要的理论意义，因此，了解视觉系统何时确实以及何时不表现出适应非常重要。在这里，我们以一种特定类型的适应为例：大小视觉适应。我们通过四项实验的证据支持这一观点，认为尽管实验室中存在大小适应的强大影响，但 (1) 大小适应的效果在知觉上微不足道（在某些情况下，几乎察觉不到），(2) 一些大小适应的效果似乎相互矛盾，并且很难根据当前的大小适应理论来解释，以及 (3) 先前关于大小适应的研究可能未能将大小作为适应的维度来分离。最终，我们认为，虽然有证据证明大小适应是真实的，但大小适应是一个令人困惑且理解不深的现象。
