Assignment

Subject: Cognitive Psychology Theory

Topic: Illusion
Submitted To: Dr. Fatima Khurram
Submitted By: Imran Aslam
MSc. Applied Psychology
Department of Education (Morning)
First Semester
Islamia University
Bahawalpur
Illusion
An illusion is a distortion of the senses,
which can reveal how the human brain
normally organizes and interprets sensory
stimulation. Though illusions distort our
perception of reality, they are generally
shared by most people.

Illusions may occur with any of the human

senses, but visual illusions (optical illusion)
are the best-known and understood. The
emphasis on visual illusions occurs
because vision often dominates the other
senses. For example, individuals watching
a ventriloquist will perceive the voice is
coming from the dummy since they are able
to see the dummy mouth the words.
Some illusions are based on general
assumptions the brain makes during
perception. These assumptions are made
using organizational principles
(e.g., Gestalt theory), an individual's
capacity for depth perception and motion
perception, and perceptual constancy.
Other illusions occur because of biological
sensory structures within the human
body or conditions outside the body within
one's physical environment.
The term illusion refers to a specific form of
sensory distortion. Unlike a hallucination,
which is a distortion in the absence of
a stimulus, an illusion describes a
misinterpretation of a true sensation. For
example, hearing voices regardless of the
environment would be a hallucination,
whereas hearing voices in the sound of
running water (or another auditory source)
would be an illusion.
Illusions In Cognitive
Psychology
Cognitive illusions arise from interaction of
perceived reality with assumptions about
the world (prior knowledge), leading to
“unconscious inferences”.  Cognitive
illusions rely on stored knowledge about the
world (depth, rabbits, women) and are also
under some degree of conscious control
(we can generally reverse the perception at
will).
The way you look at an object can affect
how you see it. Sometimes there are two
images in the same picture, but you can
only see one at a time so your brain
chooses one (when it deals with too much
information).
Instead of demonstrating a physiological
base they interact with different levels of
perceptual processing, in-built assumptions
or ‘knowledge’ are misdirected. Cognitive
illusions are commonly divided into
ambiguous illusions, distorting illusions,
paradox illusions, or fiction illusions. They
often exploit the predictive hypotheses of
early visual processing. Stereograms are
based on a cognitive visual illusion.

Ambiguous Illusions

Ambiguous illusions are pictures

or objects that offer significant changes in
appearance. Perception will ‘switch’
between the alternates as they are
considered in turn as available data does
not confirm a single view. The Necker cube
is a good example, the motion parallax due
to movement is being misinterpreted, even
in the face of other sensory data. Another
popular is the Rubin vase.

Paradox Illusions

Paradox illusions offer objects

that are paradoxical or impossible, such as
the Penrose triangle or impossible
staircases seen, for example, in the work of
M. C. Escher. The impossible triangle is an
illusion dependent on a cognitive
misunderstanding that adjacent edges
must join. They occur as a byproduct of
perceptual learning.

Distorting Illusions

Distorting illusions are the most

common, these illusions offer distortions of
size, length, or curvature. They were simple
to discover and are easily repeatable. Many
are physiological illusions, such as the Café
wall illusion which exploits the early visual
system encoding for edges.
Other distortions, such as converging line
illusions, are more difficult to place as
physiological or cognitive as the depth-cue
challenges they offer are not easily placed.
All pictures that have perspective cues are
in effect illusions. Visual judgments as to
size are controlled by perspective or other
depth-cues and can easily be wrongly set.

Fiction Illusions

Fiction illusions are the perception of

objects that are genuinely not there to all
but a single observer, such as those
induced by schizophrenia or hallucinogenic
drugs.