Exploration of the Object-Based Warping Illusion: Distortions of Space Due to Objects and Grouping
Date
2022-05
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
Our perception of visual objects is amongst the most important aspects of our visual
perception. While most illusions of space focus on depth or comparison cues, another class of
object-based illusions elicit effects from their own innate properties. Whether or not these
warping properties of illusions exist uniformly or separately between singular objects and
strongly grouped objects is a topic of debate in visual perception literature. We further explore
the object-based warping (OBW) illusion and the one-is-more (OIM) illusion in a set of two
studies: the first of which studies the effects found in the OBW illusion on a continuum of
objecthood, the second of which studies the combination of effects between the OBW and OIM
illusions. The first study showed that grouped objects exhibit object warping effects, and these
effects exist on a continuum directly correlated to objecthood strength. The second study showed
that expansion effects increase uniformly with increasing objecthood, from two objects to one
object. However, the second study provided contradicting results as well, where the compression
effect increased uniformly from one object to two objects. This provides evidence for the
potential distinction of processing between strongly grouped objects and singular objects.
Description
Keywords
Perception, Object-based warping, One-is-more illusion (OIM)