📂 3.2 Perception and Illusion

As we all know our senses can deceive us. What we may not realize is that we can learn a great deal about how our perceptual systems work by seeing how it is that they break down in sometimed spectacular ways. Cognitive psychologists have explored in depth the ways in which our visual systems get derailed when presented with visual stimuli that give mixed messages or deceptive cues about spatial orientation, color, motion, surface, texture and illumination. By studying the particular ways in which we get things wrong we can catch a glimpse of the active processing behind the scenes that turn the raw data of our senses into a comprehensive model of a moving three dimensional world in color. This section explores these issues.