Beyond Sight

Our research aims to discover how different factors influence the way one perceives visual illusions. From different lighting to different age groups, the way one may describe an illustration is affected by various components.
Harsimrat Dhaliwal Jasnoor Goray
Grade 11

Presentation

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Problem

Visual illusions present a captivating facet of perceptual encounters, challenging our comprehension of the intricate interplay between sensory stimuli and cognitive processes. This all-encompassing review combines recent strides in the exploration of visual illusions, intending to explain the inherent cognitive mechanisms and neural correlates involved in their manifestation. Progress in neuroimaging techniques has empowered researchers to unravel the neural substrates linked to visual illusions. Particular emphasis is placed on the participation of primary sensory areas, higher-order cortical regions, and subcortical structures in mediating the illusory perceptual experiences. The integration of computational models and behavioural experiments is also underscored as a promising avenue for refining our grasp of the algorithms governing illusion perception.

 

Method

 

 

Research

Retinal Ganglion Cells - Role of the Eye

These cells allow direct communication with the brain. Retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) are a particular kind of neuron situated in the retina's innermost surface, also known as the ganglion cell layer. Bipolar cells and amacrine cells are both intermediary neuronal categories that the brain utilizes to receive sensory data from photoreceptors. Together, retinal ganglion cells send visual signals from the retina—both image-forming and non-image-forming—to various areas of the thalamus, hypothalamus, mesencephalon, or middle brain.

Although retinal ganglion cells differ greatly in their dimensions, neural connections, and reactions to visual stimuli, they are all distinguished by the presence of a long axon that penetrates the brain. The optic nerve, optic chiasm, and optic tract are made up of these axons. A minor portion of retinal ganglion cells are highly photosensitive but have a negligible impact on vision; the axons they produce comprise the retinohypothalamic tract and are involved in circadian cycles, pupillary light reaction, and pupil resizing.

The retina of an individual has between 1.2 and 1.5 million retinal ganglion cells. Each retinal ganglion cell receives information from approximately 100 rods and cones on average, out of the 125 million photoreceptors that make up each retina. These figures, however, differ significantly between people and depending on where in the retina they are located. Each ganglion cell in the fovea (center of the retina) communicates with up to five photoreceptors. Several thousand photoreceptors in the outer periphery (ends of the retina) send data to an individual ganglion cell.

Visual Cortex - Role of the Brain

Mammals process visual stimuli in the visual cortex, a region located in the brain's rear. In both cerebral hemispheres, the occipital lobe houses the primary visual cortex. It encircles and extends into the calcarine sulcus, a deep sulcus. The primary visual cortex accounts for a considerable amount of the total cortical surface while making up only a tiny percentage of the visible surface of the cortex in the occipital lobe due to its extension into the calcarine sulcus. 

From the thalamus, these projections proceed through at least three different routes to reach the primary visual cortex. Three pathways originate from the retina: one from the large neurons known as magnocellular (M cells), another from the smaller neurons known as parvocellular (P cells), and a third from the small neurons known as koniocellular (K cells), which project to V1. Due to their varied responses to various visual stimuli, these various neuronal types are specialized for particular stimulus categories. For instance, M cells appear specifically designed to identify movement (including direction, speed, and location). P cells are involved in colour vision and appear to be vital for spatial resolution, or the shape, size, and colour of an item. Though their exact roles are undefined, K cells have been hypothesized to play a role in certain aspects of colour vision.

In the primary visual cortex, neurons are grouped into columns with comparable functional characteristics. One column of neurons, for instance, may react more strongly to stimuli that are viewed by the contralateral eye and have a specific orientation, such as upright versus horizontal. Only when the input originates from the ipsilateral eye do neurons in a different column show a primary response to upright orientation. These neural columns are gathered into assemblies that are occasionally referred to as modules. Each module has the array of neural columns required to examine a specific, condensed region of the visual field. Therefore, several of these modules are located beneath the cortical surface of the main visual cortex to complete the visual scene.

Additionally, it divides the data into two channels known as the ventral and dorsal streams. The ventral stream aids object recognition, while the dorsal stream is responsible for motor control. Both streams are directed to the visual cortex's second major area from V1. 

While V2 adds some more sophisticated processing, such as identifying the differences in signals from the two eyes that result in binocular vision, it nevertheless carries out many of the same tasks as V1.

Direct communication was established between V3 and V2's corresponding dorsal and ventral subsystems. While ventral V3 might be involved in colour sensitivity, dorsal V3 is involved in motion processing. When considering the entirety of V3, it is less distinct than other regions of the visual cortex.

One pathway, also called the "Where Pathway," leaves V2 and travels to V5, which is connected to motion and object detection. The other pathway, which connects to V4 and is frequently called the "What Pathway," is linked to generating recognition and object representation.

 

To what extent do cultural and environmental factors contribute to the perception of visual illusions?

Culture and society have a profound impact on our ability to receive and interpret visual information, which can be seen in our visual perception. For example, cultural communication norms might influence how people use body language, facial expressions, and eye contact to convey meaning. 

Müller-Lyer illusion

The Müller-Lyer illusion, in which subjects believe a line segment ending in inward-pointing arrows is longer than a horizontal line segment ending in outward-pointing arrows, is one of the most well-known optical illusions. However, cross-cultural testing on this presumably uniform phenomenon has revealed cultural differences in illusion strength. For instance, while determining the relative lengths of the lines, people from the Toda tribe in India and the Murray Islanders in Melanesia both made considerably fewer mistakes compared to their British counterparts. The degree of illusion is also significantly stronger among Americans, according to extensive cross-cultural studies of 17 societies, including a tribe of Filipino gardeners, midwest residents in the United States, multiple African farming and hunter-collector cultures, and an Aboriginal foraging lifestyle in Australia. Moreover, young people in certain societies (such as Kalahari Desert hunter-gatherers) were resistant to the Müller-Lyer illusion. The results imply that people who were raised in specific visual settings are invulnerable to Müller-Lyer illusions. 

For instance, the carpentered environment theory claims that people learn to perceive the world in three dimensions based on their experiences in their immediate surroundings. People's depth of field in Western civilized civilizations is based on the arrangement of vertical and horizontal lines with differently angled corners in rooms, houses, and furniture. In such cultures, people identify obtuse angles with somewhat farther-off views and acute angles with closer objects, like the corner of a rug (such as an intersection of a pair of walls and a floor). Once individuals become familiar with this particular pattern of perception in the three-dimensional environment, they continue to use it when observing the visual representation in the two-dimensional space. In art, the Western viewpoint is a prime example. From the Western perspective, matters are portrayed with sharp angles and bigger proportions when they are closer to the viewer, and smaller and more obtuse angles when they are farther away. Due to this, a line terminating in an inward-facing arrow looks to be farther away (and thus longer) to Westerners than it is. Yet humans have fewer opportunities to understand the links between lines and angles in their sensory world in societies constructed with fewer angular shapes. Thus, the carpentered environment hypothesis contributes to understanding why certain cultures' citizens are less prone than Westerners to fall victim to the Müller-Lyer illusion.

William Hudson’s (1960) Experiment

A further study looked at the interpretations of minors and adult illiterate labourers from an African Bantu community regarding an image depicting a huge hunter pointing a spear toward an antelope and an elephant. From a nonWestern multifaceted viewpoint, the elephant was closer to the hunter; nevertheless, from the perspective of Westerners, it would be farther away because it was depicted as smaller than the antelope and the hunter. In the two-dimensional vision, the antelope was further away from the hunter, but from a Western perspective, it would be seen as being closer because of its size.

 

How does exposure to digital media and technology affect the perception of visual illusions in various age groups?

Digital technology has greatly taken over this era. Exposure to these technologies can often alter the way one may analyze a visual illusion. As the media is open to all ages, the year category they fall into plays a keen role in identifying the issues media can have. When technology takes up most of your childhood years, it can start to affect how you are visually able to process things. They tend to affect their attention span, which can influence the way they process the illusion. If your mind remains scattered, you will not be able to intake all the information that is present in front of you. A new study conducted by researchers at Binghamton University found that different kinds of online information can drastically change our sense of vision since they frequently have different optical orientations from the actual sites that people perceive in normal, urbanized and rural settings.

 

What colour dress do you see? - The role of light

Understanding the colour and intensity of the illumination is one part of colour perception. The clothing is white and gold if people perceive the lighting as bluish and dim. The outfit is blue and black in bright, yellowish light. Reddish lights are utilized in meat cases in grocery stores to enhance the redness of the flesh, creating this image. Due to this extreme overexposure, the blue/black outfit appeared to be white/gold in colour. Given the excessive lighting in the backdrop, the blue and black colours reflect sufficient light to scale up to white and gold. Variations in the displays' white balance and tone reproduction may account for why different viewers may perceive the clothing in various ways. Humans' perception of an object's colour depends on the light it emits and how well they comprehend the illumination that falls on it. Images with little background information, such as this outfit photo, might deceive the viewer. We perceive objects' colours wrongly if we interpret the lighting improperly. There will be a blue dress visible to those who perceive the illumination, which is bright and yellowish. The clothing will appear white and gold to those who perceive the illumination as bluish-dim, as the small context implies—as if it is in shadow. 

 

How does the perception of classic visual illusions (e.g., the Müller-Lyer illusion, Ponzo illusion) change across different age groups, from children to adults?

The Müller-Lyer Illusion -  The Müller-Lyer Illusion is one of psychology's most famous optical illusions. This illusion consists of two sticks, one framed by closed fins and the other by open fins. After seeing the illusions, individuals usually estimate that the stick with the two open fins is longer even though the sticks are both the same length. 

Ponzo Illusion - The Ponzo illusion has two lines placed over a drawing of a railroad track. Individuals are asked which line is longer, but the truth is that they are the same length. It’s about perspective, the line appears to be farther away on the track and looks longer. The one that's closer to the railroad looks shorter. 

 

Alfred Binet observed that The Müller-Lyer Illusion was weaker in older individuals than it was in younger individuals. A scientist known as Jean Piaget developed a concept known as concentration. According to this concept, an object in the center of a visual field is overestimated in size, compared to its surrounding objects. When children become older they start to make more eye movement, compared to younger children. Daniel Wagner, a psychologist, tested children from 7 to 19 years of age. Wagner observed the increasing and decreasing illusion magnitudes. Older individuals usually have a harder time perceiving images as they are slower in perceiving speed and direction of motion. Therefore as an individual's age increases their eyesight starts to decrease. 

 

What teaching methods or tools are most effective in improving visual perception skills in individuals of varying ages?

A major problem for the rapidly growing population of older adults (ages 65 and older) is the decline of vision. The decline in vision has been associated with an increased risk of falls and vehicle crashes. An experiment has taken place where perceptual learning could improve age-related declines in contrast sensitivity. Older and younger adults were trained for seven days using a forced-choice orientation discrimination task, with stimuli. The stimuli varied in contrast with multiple levels of additive noise. The results indicated that older individuals, following training, performed as well as pre-trained college-aged participants. Improvements in far acuity in younger individuals and near acuity in older individuals were also found. These findings indicate that behavioural interventions can greatly improve visual performance for older adults. Visual Perception skills are essential for everything from navigating our world to reading, writing, and manipulating items. To improve these sub-areas, matching activities, memory games, sorting by colour, sorting coins, puzzles, and tangram activities are all examples of how an individual's visual perception can be improved. Visual perception can be broken down into eight sub-areas. 

  1. Visual Attention - This is the ability to focus on important visual information and filter out unimportant background information. 
  2. Visual Discrimination - This is the ability to determine differences or similarities in objects based on their sizes, colours, shapes, etc.
  3. Visual Memory - This is the ability to recall visual traits of an object or form
  4. Visual-Spatial Relationship - Understanding the relationship of objects within the environment
  5. Visual Sequential-Memory - This is the ability to recall a sequence of objects in the correct order
  6. Visual Figure Ground - This is the ability to locate something in a busy background
  7. Visual Form Constancy - This is the ability to know that a form or shape is the same, even if it has been made smaller/larger or turned around. 
  8. Visual Closure - This is recognizing a form or object when part of a picture is missing.

To improve these sub-areas, matching activities, memory games, sorting by colour, sorting coins, puzzles, and tangram activities are all examples of how an individual's visual perception can be improved. 

 

Visual Attention:

Red Flags for Visual Attention Deficits:

  • Bumping into things when walking
  • Not being able to find items
  • Trouble locating specific images when other images surround the images
  • Frequent Headaches, blurry vision
  • Inability to follow directions when walking or driving

Activities that can improve Visual Attention:

  • Mazes
  • Card Games
  • Memory
  • Puzzles
  • Checkers

 

How - Individuals can increase their visual attention span by scanning board games and the things around them, as it has a larger visual field than a small computer screen. This develops visual attention, and focus, as well as adds a spatial demand. These visual skills are necessary for reading and writing. 

 

Visual Discrimination:

Red Flags for Visual Discrimination:

  • Sorting similar items such as coins, socks, and silverware, 
  • Reading words that are similar such as “cat” and “cap”
  • Completing puzzles or spotting the difference between pages

Activities that can improve Visual Discrimination:

  • Matching Activities
  • Memory Games
  • Sorting by Colour
  • Sorting Coins
  • Puzzles
  • Word Searches

How - When children play games such as matching activities, memory games, puzzles, etc it allows for the child to reason and build memory. When playing games, children analyze, therefore increasing their visual discrimination.

 

Visual Memory:

Red Flags for Visual Memory:

  • Recalling site words
  • Spelling 
  • Writing
  • Drawing

Activities that can improve Visual Memory:

  • Card Games 
  • Memory Games
  • Matching Games

How - These games can help improve an individual's vision by developing critical thinking skills and sharpening problem-solving skills. These games provide exercise for the brain and improve one’s visual recognition skills.

 

Visual-Spatial Relationships:

Red Flags for Visual-Spatial Relationship:

  • Knowing the difference between left and right
  • Reading similar letters such as b,d,p,q
  • Completing puzzles
  • Following directions

Activities that can help improve Visual-Spatial Relationships

  • Hopscotch
  • Origami
  • Puzzles
  • Obstacle Courses

How - Activities such as origami, hopscotch, puzzles, etc, help with a child's spatial awareness as well as their hand-eye coordination. Puzzles help with exercising an individual's fine motor skills and decision-making skills. Games such as hopscotch allow individuals to understand how they and the world fit together. As they play hopscotch they fit themselves on the boxes of the gameboard, which allows them to develop their spatial awareness skills. 

 

Visual Sequential-Memory:

Red Flags for Visual Sequential-Memory:

  • Difficulty with spelling
  • Unable to remember large blocks of information

Activities that can help improve Visual Sequential-Memory:

  • Sequencing activities
  • Alphabetical order activities
  • Simon Says

How - Sequencing activities, alphabetical activities and Simon says, all help with improving one’s Visual Sequential-Memory. Simon Says is a great way to help children understand directions. Simon Says helps wake up the brain and body connection. When you use your hands and feet in coordination with your eyes, it has an impact on your sensory processing and overall ability to focus. Visual Sequential-Memory is necessary for making predictions, recognizing patterns and generating behaviour. 

Visual Figure Ground:

Red Flags for Visual Figure Ground:

  • Slow to complete work
  • Loses focus when reading, and copying from the board, etc
  • Difficulty locating objects

Activities that can help improve Visual Figure Ground:

  • Sorting Games
  • Puzzles
  • Shape sorting toys
  • Memory Games
  • I Spy Games

How - Visual Figure Ground enables one to locate items in a busy background. Games such as puzzles, sorting games, shape sorting games, etc, help individuals find the hidden items in hidden pictures. This improves one’s skill by visually scanning and identifying items in a busy scene.

 

Visual Form Constancy:

Red Flags for Visual Form Constancy:

  • Slow or delayed learning to read
  • Unable to effectively read
  • Difficulty completing worksheets

Activities that can help improve Visual Form Constancy:

  • Matching Activities
  • Puzzles
  • Scavenger Hunt Games

How - Games such as puzzles, matching activities, etc, teach children to understand the bigger picture, this trains an individual's Visual Form Constancy. Children learn how to distinguish between dimensions, sizes, as well as colours, etc.

 

Visual Closure:

Red Flags for Visual Closure:

  • Difficulty completing puzzles
  • Challenged with dotted pages

 

Activities that can help improve Visual Closure:

  • Puzzles
  • Organizing Messy Drawers
  • Dot-to-Dot Pictures

How - Games such as puzzles, and organizing messy drawers help with Visual Closure as they require children to look at the small pieces of a whole figure. Children start to understand how parts are related to one another. Visual Closure is important as it allows individuals to read and comprehend information quickly without processing each letter. It also helps with differentiating between words that sound similar. 

 

How can an understanding of age-related differences in illusion perception be applied in clinical settings, such as diagnosing visual processing disorders or monitoring cognitive decline in aging populations?

Aging is associated with a decline in our perception and cognitive ability, as our age increases perceptual aids, such as glasses and hearing aids are needed. Cognitive tasks get more difficult as we age, such as paying attention and remembering stuff. By monitoring how individuals perceive illusions over time, clinicians can identify abnormalities in visual processing and catch cognitive issues in the early stages. 

Cognitive Decline:

Tools used to check one’s cognitive impairments

Montreal Cognitive Assessment - The Montreal Cognitive Assessment, is a tool frequently used in both clinical and research practices. The MoCA is designed to assist in mild cognitive impairment. This tool assesses different cognitive areas, such as attention, concentration, memory, language, conceptual thinking, etc. It helps healthcare professionals detect mild cognitive impairments. The MoCA test consists of 30 questions that usually take 10-12 minutes to complete. If an individual scores over 26, doctors do not consider them to have impaired cognitive abilities. Doctors usually prefer that individuals use the MoCA, as it is more sensitive and can pick up things better than the MMSE.

Mini-Mental State Examination - The MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination), is a tool that can detect one’s mental status. Monitoring technologies are important for older adults as they assess and detect their cognitive and functional position. This is a simple pen-and-paper test, it consists of 30 questions. The tests include orientation, concentration, attention, verbal memory, etc. This test checks individuals for cognitive impairment, such as thinking, communication, understanding, etc.

How can we improve our Cognitive Impairment? - Studies have shown that playing games, instruments, reading books and other activities can help preserve your brain functions. Cognitive decline can also be improved through regular physical activity, a healthy diet, social activity, hobbies as well as intellectual stimulation, etc.

How does Cognitive Decline affect one’s Illusion perception? - 

When individuals start to get older, declines in cognition get more severe. Individuals start to rapidly forget, it gets difficult to navigate, etc. When individuals get older, changes occur all over their body, this includes the brain. Their bodies are not able to store fluid, therefore the spinal discs shrink and they start to lose elasticity. This is why older individuals start getting smaller as they get older. Due to this, older individuals have a harder time exercising, limiting oxygen to the brain. This causes less blood to be pumped and decreases oxygen levels in the brain. When individuals get older their dendritic spines decrease, your dendritic spines are important as they transmit electrical signals to the neurons. Neurons receive and send information between the brain cells. When individuals get older their dendritic spine decreases, which causes a decrease in neurons. This causes older individuals to forget and therefore affects the way they perceive visual illusions. Your brain becomes less productive therefore it slows down. It only grasps what it can see, it does not understand the deeper meaning behind the illusions. 

Visual Processing Disorders:

Different Types of Visual Processing Disorders -

  1. Visual Discrimination Issues - Trouble seeing the difference between similar letters, shapes, etc
  2. Visual Figure-Ground Discrimination Issues - Struggling to distinguish between letters from their background
  3. Visual Sequencing Issues - Difficulty seeing shapes, letters, or words. May skip lines, or may read the same line over and over again. 
  4. Visual-Motor Processing Issues - Struggling to write within lines or bump into objects while walking
  5. Long or Short-Term Visual Memory Issues - Struggling to remember shapes, symbols or objects already seen.
  6. Visual-Spatial Issues - Unsure how close objects are to one another and trouble understanding where objects are. 
  7. Visual Closure Issues - Difficulty identifying an object when only some parts are seen.
  8. Letter and Symbol Reversal Issues - Switching numbers or letters when writing, for example mistaking B for D or W for M. 

How does this impact illusion perception? -

Visual processing disorders impact illusions as they affect how your brain interprets the visual information. Individuals with visual processing disorders may struggle to process and organize visual input accurately. For example, an individual who has a visual processing disorder may have difficulty in perceiving depth, differentiating between the background, as well as interpreting between size and shape. Illusions rely on the brain’s ability to interpret visual cues. 

Cognitive development throughout different age groups

Infants (0-2 years)

Sensorimotor Stage -  Infants go through a sensorimotor stage. During this period, infants focus on developing basic sensory and perceptual abilities, their visual system is still maturing and they may not perceive complex illusions. 

Early Childhood (2-6 years)

Preoperational Stage - During this stage, children build on object permanence and they continue to develop mentally, they see things beyond the physical world. Although children at this stage may struggle with logical reasoning as well as understanding. 

Middle Childhood (7-11 years)

Concrete Operational Stage - During this stage children start to realize that their thoughts and feelings are unique. Although children still can’t think logically. 

Adolescence (12-18 years)

Formal Operational Stage - During this period children begin logically thinking, and start to understand theories and abstract concepts. 

Adulthood (19 years and Older)

Postformal Thought - During this stage of development, a person gains the ability to synthesize opposing ideas, as well as understand that there are contradictions in the world.

Early Adulthood (20s and 30s)

During this stage cognitive abilities continue to develop, individuals start to better integrate emotions and logically start to make decisions. 

Middle adulthood (40s to 60s)

Cognitive Stability - During this decision cognitive functions may start to decline slightly. This stage is affected by aging, things like processing, finding and recalling information start to get difficult. 

Late Adulthood (60s and beyond)

Cognitive Decline - Some cognitive functions, such as processing speed, and memory, may decline during this stage. However, intelligence, wisdom, and knowledge may remain stable or may even increase. 

 

Data

Analysis:

Numerous research have attempted to explain how one perceives irregular moving illusions, a common family of illusory Still, there are disparities in comprehension. Age-related variations in illusion motion susceptibility could aid in the further explanation of the fundamental processing pathways. We looked into how aging affected people's perceptions by presenting people with several abnormal moving illusions. Our survey demonstration focused on finding the differences between different age groups and how they all perceive different illusions. From shadowing visual illusions to priming visual illusions, we presented the selected individuals with various examples. From the data we collected, the results varied as the ages progressed. As the ages increased, the perception of the orange/blue moving illusion varied. At younger ages (5-30), individuals saw the image move. When we moved up the ladder, the majority of ages 31-65+ saw a still image. This conclusion comes directly from eye movement. Since these sensory systems are more involved in movement understanding and motion adjustment, they all relate to age. Alternatively, the decline with age can be the result of ocular impairments thus supporting the results given by our survey. Our findings directly demonstrate how different each human brain is.

Conclusion

A great deal of individuals assume that illusory phenomena are simply an enjoyable pastime but they are related to science. Nonetheless, a great deal of knowledge about the interaction between both the brain and the retina may be gained from studying the connections between them and how they respond to various illusions. Access to extreme stimuli, such as illuminated surfaces or motion, is a common characteristic of physiological illusions. These lead to a lack of balance in the eyes of the observer, which modifies perception. Physiological tricks like the "Dress" exploit this brightness, leading to a variety of outcomes. Many times our minds and eyes instinctively combine what they perceive to form the conclusion we think we should. Viewpoint is frequently suggested in numerous 2D images (like the blue and orange spiral) by specific creative approaches and mathematical principles, which work together to provide the impression that there are three dimensions present when in reality, there are only two. The phenomena of visual deception provide a striking example of the applicability of perception research as it illustrates how objects often differ significantly between what we think of them and their actual state.

Citations

van Polanen, Vonne, and Marco Davare. “Interactions between Dorsal and Ventral Streams for Controlling Skilled Grasp.” Neuropsychologia, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Dec. 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4678292/#:~:text=They%20 argued%20that%20the%20 ventral,actions%20(vision%20for%20action). 

“Visual Cortex.” Vivid Vision, www.seevividly.com/info/Physiology_of_Vision/The_Brain/Visual_System/Visual_Cortex. Accessed 9 Jan. 2024. 

Figure 1 Müller-Lyer Illusion - University of Alberta, sites.ualberta.ca/~tmasuda/PublishedPapers/Masuda2009.pdf. Accessed 10 Jan. 2024. 

Author links open overlay panelMinas N. Kastanakis a, et al. “The Effect of Culture on Perception and Cognition: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, 16 Apr. 2013, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296313001227. 

The Influence of Culture on Visual Perception - Mit, web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/socialperception14.pdf. Accessed 10 Jan. 2024. 

“Culture and Perception, Part II: The Muller-Lyer Illusion.” International Cognition and Culture Institute, 11 Oct. 2023, cognitionandculture.net/blogs/icci-blog/culture-and-perception-part-ii-the-muller-lyer-illusion/. 

“Visual Perception May Depend on Birthplace and Environment.” ScienceDaily, ScienceDaily, 23 May 2017, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170523095013.htm. 

Cretenoud, Aline F., et al. “Individual Differences in the Müller-Lyer and Ponzo Illusions Are Stable across Different Contexts.” Journal of Vision, The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, 3 June 2020, jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2766319. 

“Digital Media Can Alter Our Visual Perception.” Earth.Com, 22 Feb. 2023, www.earth.com/news/digital-media-can-alter-our-visual-perception/.

Acknowledgement

We would like to acknowledge our Biology teacher, Mrs. Fauzia, who overlooked our science fair project and provided insight.

We would also like to acknowledge all the individuals who participated in our survey. Due to their time and effort, we constructed a detailed analysis of how one perceives different illusions.