What is the illusion of perception

What is the illusion of perception? This issue is being studied by scientists not only in our country, but throughout the world. It is worth noting that this topic is of great interest for ordinary people who are not among the circle of psychologists. In general, the illusion of perception is not an adequate reflection of the properties of the object or of the object itself when it is perceived. This can be any gray object that, when placed on a dark background, turns out to be darker than when placed on an absolutely black background.

People today know a lot of illusions. This is a stroboscopic, autokinetic, induced movement. All this can be attributed to the group of illusions of the movement. In addition, there are many illusions in the world of temperature type, time and even color. However, there is no theory that would explain all this. Most experts believe that such effects are the result of the work of our perception mechanisms occurring under unusual conditions.

The illusion of perception, more precisely, its nature, in most cases is due to certain features of the structure of the human eye. Many people in general believe that the whole of our world is one huge illusion. Many books were written on this subject. Illusions of perception in psychology are explained as a distorted perception of something from our world or in general of all reality. Illusions make us experience those sensations that do not correspond to reality at all.

Probably, many are aware of the visual illusion of the perception of Mueller-Layer. For a long time, specialists tried to explain this distortion of reality. As a result, it was this illusion that was much better studied than anything else. An excellent example of the illusion of perception of this type is the distortion of some things or objects when they are perceived through a prism or ordinary water. In addition, as examples, there are numerous mirages that often appear in deserts. It is simply impossible to explain such processes with the help of psychology.

It should be noted that at the moment there is no generally accepted unified psychological classification of this kind of illusions. In addition, they can be found in almost all sensory-type modalities. If we talk about the taste illusions of perception, it is, first of all, the illusion of contrast. That is, as a result of the use of any food, some taste sensations are superimposed on others. For example, sucrose often gives the water a bitter taste, and salt - sour.

As for the so-called proprioceptive illusion of perception, an example of this kind can be a special or, as they say, drunken gait of professional sailors. In their case, the deck seems to the person a fairly stable surface. If the sailor goes on a level surface, then the earth seems to leave from under his feet.

In order to explain the illusions of perception, scientists put forward a huge number of diverse theories. According to one of them, the illusion of perception is not at all an abnormal phenomenon. This process is quite expected. The whole point is that the very perception of a person depends, first of all, on the interaction of several stimuli in the visual field. For example, if you study a neutral color, based specifically on the ratio of two or more neighboring areas, you can expect an illusory contrast. That is, in this case everything is predictable.

There is another theory that explains the origin of specific illusions, based on the effect of asymmetry. It is here that we can relate the illusion of perception, which was already mentioned above, under the name of Mueller-Layer.