Why do we need two eyes? Why are all cats grey at night and appear to move faster the day? Why is the sky blue and the setting sun red? This book explains the multifaceted nature of perception, and discusses the mysteries of vision. It provides readers with experiments to help them discover optical illusions and the features of their own perception. Illusions of Seeing begins with a discussion on the essence of light and its perception to the human eye. It presents a comprehensive overview of the basic laws of human perception as well as the fundamentals of good gestalt. Subsequent chapters discuss geometric-optical illusions; the perception of form, brightness, and translucency and their interaction with each other; ambiguous perception, color vision, spatial vision. The book ends with a discussion of the perception of motion and its interaction with color, form, and spatial depth with a full chapter devoted to illusions in our everyday life. Consider this your travel guide in the marvelous world of sight, to experience a completely individual way to understand and improve your own perception. Illusions of Seeing will be of interest to psychologists, physicists, biologists, and undergraduate and graduate students within the field of cognitive psychology.

It looks so easy. Open your eyes, and immediately there is a world of objects in glorious Technicolour. It takes no time or effort - perception just happens. Or does it? As this book discusses, the more that has been discovered about the senses and the brain, the more we know that seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting depend on incredibly complicated physiology. This book is about the phenomena of perception. It covers the evolution of the sense organs, through to how perception really works and the phenomena of illusions as keys for unlocking secrets of perception.

This intriguing collection contains more than 275 optical illusions that appear to change before your eyes. Al Seckel carefully selected both well-known images, such as Shepard's tabletop, Wade's spiral, Ames room and Rubin's face/vase, and many lesser-known, but no less effective, illusions. Every type of optical illusion is here, along with notes about the science of each visual perception and how the illusions work. Among the baffling images and shapes are: Figure/ground illusions, in which one shape switches into another then back again Ambiguous figures Impossible objects Trompe l'oeil Stereo illusions. With illusions rendered in photography, artwork and computer imaging, and a huge variety of themes and effects, Optical Illusions dazzles both the mind and the eye.

Visual illusions are compelling phenomena that draw attention to the brain's capacity to construct our perceptual world. The Compendium is a collection of over 100 chapters on visual illusions, written by the illusion creators or by vision scientists who have investigated mechanisms underlying the phenomena. --

In this volume, originally published in 1978, the authors survey the historical and contemporary research literature pertaining to two-dimensional visual-geometric illusions. They bring together much of the known data, summarising and evaluating theories that have been offered to explain these phenomena. Coren and Girgus provide a new conceptual framework that suggest that visual illusions are not unitary phenomena. Within this framework, illusions do not represent a breakdown in normal perceptual processing. Rather, it is proposed that each illusion is produced by a number of mechanisms operating at different levels in the visual information processing system. The book contains an extensive collection of illusion figures. It will be essential reading for all of those concerned with vision and visual perception, since it integrates the study of illusions into the main body of psychological and perceptual theories at the time.