Seeing Isn't Believing | The Scientist Magazine® - 0 views
www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/43036/title/Seeing-Isn-t-Believing/
knowledge illusion
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Much of the early research on motion perception was performed on insects,1 but similar results have been found for a huge range of species, from fishes to birds to mammals
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Correspondingly, prey animals would find color vision of little use, but they are extremely good at seeing the motion of an approaching predator.
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Ambiguous illusions that can be interpreted in two different ways, but not both ways at the same time, can also shed light on how we perceive the world around us
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Why does the visual system treat this jumping dot as a single object in motion, instead of seeing one spot disappear while an unrelated spot appears nearby at the same instant? First, the brain usually treats “suspicious coincidences” as being more than coincidences: it is more likely that this is a single spot in motion rather than two separate events. Second, the visual system is tolerant of brief gaps in stimuli, filling in those gaps when necessary. This perception of apparent motion is, of course, the basis of the entire movie and TV industries, as viewers see a smooth motion picture when in reality they are simply watching a series of stationary stills.