Illusion Decrement and Transfer of Illusion Decrement in Müller-Lyer Figures

Perception ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 391-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Predebon ◽  
Kate Stevens ◽  
Agnes Petocz

In the work reported in the literature the reduction or decrement in the magnitude of the Müller-Lyer illusion with continued inspection has been typically investigated with the use of the composite illusion form. Three experiments are reported in which the illusion decrement was separately examined in the underestimated (wings-in) and the overestimated (wings-out) forms of the Müller-Lyer illusion, with particular attention paid to the transfer of illusion decrement between the two forms. Decrement occurred in both forms of the Müller-Lyer illusion, although there was considerable intersubject variability in decrement effects, and nonuniform rates of decrement across the inspection period. In none of the experiments did transfer of illusion decrement between the two forms occur. It is argued that the attentional/differentiation hypothesis of illusion decrement provides a plausible account of the present findings as well as of those found with the composite Müller-Lyer figure.

Perception ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Predebon

Two experiments are reported in which the decline or decrement in the magnitude of the Brentano Müller-Lyer illusion was measured. Observers made a pre-test judgment and, after a variable intervening time period, a post-test judgment of illusion magnitude. In experiment 1, the intervening time periods were 1, 2, and 3 min during which time the independent groups of observers allocated to each of the three time periods either systematically scanned the Brentano figure (inspection conditions) or waited until the intervening period had elapsed (no-inspection conditions). Experiment 2, which included an additional 5 min intervening time period, evaluated a response-bias explanation for the results of the inspection conditions of experiment 1. Taken together, the findings of the two experiments indicate that sheer inspection of the Brentano figure produces illusion decrement. However, illusion decrement was independent of the duration of the inspection period, with equivalent amounts of decrement occurring across the range of viewing times examined in the two experiments. The pattern of these results suggests that theories of Müller-Lyer decrement must incorporate a factor attributable to, or correlated with, inspection time, whose effect in reducing illusion magnitude is confined mainly to the first 1 or 2 min of active visual inspection of the Brentano illusion figure.


1994 ◽  
Vol 79 (2) ◽  
pp. 707-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clare Porac

Decrement, a time-related decrease in the magnitude of the Mueller-Lyer illusion, was measured separately for the wings-out and the wings-in variants of the Mueller-Lyer figure. There were significant reductions of wings-out illusion magnitude during the decrement period. Observers viewing the wings-in segment showed a non-significant decrement pattern. Analyses of individual decrement patterns showed that illusion magnitude did not decrease for a number of observers even when there were significant time-related trends at the group level. Data for 80 observers imply that the mechanisms of perceptual learning proposed by previous models of Mueller-Lyer illusion decrement are not sufficient explanations of the decrement process.


1974 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Swisher ◽  
Evans Mandes

56 adult Ss participated in an experiment to test the hypothesis that the Müller-Lyer illusion decrement is related to adaptation effects involved in the perception of angled lines. A Pearson significant ( p < .01) correlation of .89 between the time it took to perceive an increment of the angle in angled lines and the time it took to perceive a decrement in the Müller-Lyer illusion was interpreted as supporting a greater emphasis on the use of adaptation effects as explanatory concepts for the Müller-Lyer figure.


Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson

This chapter develops and refines the analogy between knowledge and action in Knowledge and its Limits. The general schema is: knowledge is to belief as action is to intention. The analogy reverses direction of fit between mind and world. The knowledge/belief side corresponds to the inputs to practical reasoning, the action/intention side to its outputs. Since desires are inputs to practical reasoning, the desire-as-belief thesis is considered sympathetically. When all goes well with practical reasoning, one acts on what one knows. Belief plays the same local role as knowledge, and intention as action, in practical reasoning. This is the appropriate setting to understand knowledge norms for belief and practical reasoning. Marginalizing knowledge in epistemology is as perverse as marginalizing action in the philosophy of action. Opponents of knowledge-first epistemology are challenged to produce an equally systematic and plausible account of the relation between the cognitive and the practical.


Author(s):  
Jon Robson

This chapter discusses a position it terms ‘belief pessimism concerning aesthetic testimony’ (BP). According to BP (i) judgements of aesthetic value are beliefs and (ii) aesthetic judgements are subject to some additional norm not active with respect to judgements concerning more mundane matters which (inter alia) prevents such judgements from legitimately being formed on the basis of testimony. The chapter argues that BP should be rejected since it faces a number of pressing objections relating to the nature of belief. First, it proposes a fundamental difference between aesthetic beliefs and beliefs of other kinds without properly motivating this distinction. Secondly, BP is in tension with any plausible account of the nature of belief. The chapter concludes, then, that at least one of (i) or (ii) should be rejected.


2002 ◽  
Vol 13 (02) ◽  
pp. 072-082 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia G. Fowler ◽  
Christopher D. Bauch ◽  
Wayne O. Olsen

The purpose of this study was to determine whether clicks presented in rarefaction or condensation modes produce more accurate diaghostic information. Subjects were 20 consecutive patients who were seen at the Mayo Clinic for unilateral acoustic neuromas. The nontumor ear served as a control to minimize intersubject variability in the latencies. A standard audio logic evaluation was followed by an auditory brainstem response (ABR) test for which the stimuli were rarefaction and condensation clicks. Responses were analyzed for the presence of waves I, III, and V; absolute latencies of waves I, III, and V; interpeak intervals I–III, III–V, and I–V; and interaurallatency difference for wave V. The results indicated that measures from both polarities were similar in this set of patients and that neither click polarity provided diagnostic advantages over the other. Recommendations are to collect ABRs to both click polarities individually to obtain the full complement of waves on which to base the diagnostic impression.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harriet E. Baber

Abstract Modal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s possibly being F with its having a counterpart that is F at another possible world; temporal counterpart theory identifies a thing’s having been F or going to be F, with its having a counterpart that is F at another time. Benovsky, J. 2015. “Alethic Modalities, Temporal Modalities, and Representation.” Kriterion: Journal of Philosophy 29: 18–34 in this journal endorses modal counterpart theory but holds that temporal counterpart theory is untenable because it does not license the ascription of the intuitively correct temporal properties to ordinary objects, and hence that we should understand ordinary objects, including persons, as transtemporal ‘worms’. I argue that the worm theory is problematic when it comes to accounting for what matters in survival and that temporal counterpart theory provides a plausible account of personal persistence.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-72
Author(s):  
Lauren Olin

Abstract Despite sustained philosophical attention, no theory of humor claims general acceptance. Drawing on the resources provided by intentional systems theory, this article first outlines an approach to investigating humor based on the idea of a comic stance, then sketches the Dismissal Theory of Humor (DTH) that has resulted from pursuing that approach. According to the DTH, humor manifests in cases where the future-directed significance of anticipatory failures is dismissed. Mirth, on this view, is the reward people get for declining to update predictive representational schemata in ways that maximize their futureoriented value. The theory aims to provide a plausible account of the role of humor in human mental and social life, but it also aims to be empirically vulnerable, and to generate testable predictions about how the comic stance may actually be undergirded by cognitive architectures.


2021 ◽  
pp. 095679762199155
Author(s):  
Amanda R. Brown ◽  
Wim Pouw ◽  
Diane Brentari ◽  
Susan Goldin-Meadow

When we use our hands to estimate the length of a stick in the Müller-Lyer illusion, we are highly susceptible to the illusion. But when we prepare to act on sticks under the same conditions, we are significantly less susceptible. Here, we asked whether people are susceptible to illusion when they use their hands not to act on objects but to describe them in spontaneous co-speech gestures or conventional sign languages of the deaf. Thirty-two English speakers and 13 American Sign Language signers used their hands to act on, estimate the length of, and describe sticks eliciting the Müller-Lyer illusion. For both gesture and sign, the magnitude of illusion in the description task was smaller than the magnitude of illusion in the estimation task and not different from the magnitude of illusion in the action task. The mechanisms responsible for producing gesture in speech and sign thus appear to operate not on percepts involved in estimation but on percepts derived from the way we act on objects.


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