Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Science
Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1: Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory.
Psychology, Experimental
Thus, all the phenomena of these illusion-bands have been explained as
the result solely of the hiding by the rod of successive sectors of
the disc. The only physiological principles involved are those (1) of
the duration of after-images, and (2) of their summation into a
characteristic effect. It may have seemed to the reader tedious and
unnecessary so minutely to study the bands, especially the details
last mentioned; yet it was necessary to show how _all_ the possible
observable phenomena arise from the purely geometrical fact that
sectors are successively hidden. Otherwise the assertions of previous
students of the illusion, that more intricate physiological processes
are involved, could not have been refuted. The present writer does not
assert that no processes like contrast, induction, etc., come into
play to modify somewhat the saturation, etc., of the colors in the
bands. It must be here as in every other case of vision. But it is now
demonstrated that these remoter physiological processes contribute
nothing _essential_ to the illusion. For these could be dispensed with
and the illusion would still remain.
[Illustration: PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW. MONOGRAPH SUPPLEMENT, 17. PLATE VI.
Fig. 10.]
If any reader still suspects that more is involved than the
persistence of after-images, and their summation into a characteristic
effect, he will find it interesting to study the illusion with a
camera. The 'physiological' functions referred to belong as well to
the dry-plate as to the retina, while the former exhibits, presumably,
neither contrast nor induction. The illusion-bands can be easily
photographed in a strong light, if white and black sectors are used in
place of colored ones. It is best to arrange the other variable
factors so as to make the transition-bands as narrow as possible (p.
174, No. 4). The writer has two negatives which show the bands very
well, although so delicately that it is not feasible to try to
reproduce them.
VIII. SOME CONVENIENT DEVICES FOR EXHIBITING THE ILLUSION.
The influence of the width of sector is prettily shown by a special
disc like that shown in Fig. 12 (Plate VII.), where the colors are
dark-red and light-green, the shaded being the darker sector. A narrow
rod passed before such a disc by hand at a moderate rate will give
over the outer ring equally wide green and red bands; but on the inner
rings the red bands grow narrower, the green broader.
The fact that the bands are not 'images of the rod' can be shown by
another disc (Fig. 13, Plate VII.). In all three rings the lighter
(green) sector is 60° wide, but disposed on the disc as shown. The
bands are broken into zigzags. The parts over the outer ring lag
behind those over the middle, and these behind those over the inner
ring--'behind,' that is, farther behind the rod.
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