Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, January 1899: Volume LIV, No. 3, January 1899
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
I tried this experiment with a class of over thirty university
students of Psychology, and, although they were disposed to be quite
critical and suspected some kind of an illusion, only three or four
drew the letters correctly; all the rest filled in the imaginary light
contours; some even drew them as heavily as the real strokes. I
followed this by an experiment of a similar character. I placed upon
a table a figure (Fig. 4) made of light cardboard, fastened to blocks
of wood at the base so that the pieces would easily stand upright. The
middle piece, which is rectangular and high, was placed a little in
front of the rest of the figure. The students were asked to describe
precisely what they saw, and with one exception they all described, in
different words, a semicircular piece of cardboard with a rectangular
piece in front of it. In reality there was no half-circle of
cardboard, but only parts of two quarter-circles. The students, of
course, were well aware that their physical eyes could not see what
was behind the middle cardboard, but they inferred that the two side
pieces were parts of one continuous semicircle. This they saw, so far
as they saw it at all, with their mind's eye.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--The black and white portions of this design
are precisely alike, but the effect of looking at the figure as a
pattern in black upon a white background, or as a pattern in white
upon a black background, is quite different, although the difference
is not easily described.]
There is a further interesting class of illustrations in which a
single outward impression changes its character according as it is
viewed as representing one thing or another. In a general way we see
the same thing all the time, and the image on the retina does not
change. But as we shift the attention from one portion of the view to
another, or as we view it with a different mental conception of what
the figure represents, it assumes a different aspect, and to our
mental eye becomes quite a different thing. A slight but interesting
change takes place if we view Fig. 5 first with the conception that
the black is the pattern to be seen and the white the background, and
again try to see the white as the pattern against a black background.
I give a further illustration of such a change in Fig. 6. In our
first and natural view of this we focus the attention upon the black
lines and observe the familiar illusion, that the four vertical lines
seem far from parallel. That they are parallel can be verified by
measurement, or by covering up all of the diagram except the four main
lines. But if the white part of the diagram is conceived as the design
against a black background, then the design is no longer the same, and
with this change the illusion appears, and the four lines seem
parallel, as they really are. It may require a little effort to bring
about this change, but it is very marked when once realised.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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