Idiosyncratic perception: a link between acuity, perceived position and apparent size.

Humans quite literally do not see eye to eye

31 May 2021

Each person has a unique visual fingerprint to which they have to adapt their actions accordingly.

Accurate visual perception is critical for many extremely risky tasks, from performing surgery to flying planes, and for making line calls in several sports. People assume that what they see is a perfect reflection of the real world on the retina.

Three researchers, including one at Osaka University in Japan, tested nine people’s perceived location of circle on a screen (experiment 1), as well as their ability to determine the displacement between two very close lines — a common test for visual acuity (experiment 2).

They found consistent differences between participants’ location perception in experiment 1, which appeared to be connected to each individual’s visual acuity demonstrated in experiment 2.

Three participants went on to estimate the sizes of a series of arcs, which revealed that the perceived size of an arc varied according to its position in the observer’s field of vision.

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References

1. Proc. Roy. Soc. B 287, 20200825 (2020). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2020.0825