A real-world visual illusion

I will describe our research into a surprising visual illusion in which humans misperceive the shape of a highly familiar object in a highly familiar context: their own mobile phone while they hold it in their hand. Unlike many other illusions that rely on controlling visual information, this shape illusion is robust in fully natural conditions, and it requires only that one eye’s retinal image is slightly minified. Our investigations indicate that this illusion results from a failure of the visual system to discard distorted binocular cues for object slant, even if the distorted slant does not reach awareness. This failure challenges our current understanding of sensory cue combination and informs our practical insights into the perceptual effects of prescription spectacles. https://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/faculty/emily-cooper