ArticleAttention, perception & psychophysics2023
On the origin of the Helmholtz's square illusion: An attentional account.
Article in Attention, perception & psychophysics, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 citations in OpenAlex.
- When stripes in clothes deceive: Cross-cultural examination of perceptual and belief discrepancies about horizontal stripes in clothes.PloS one · 2026Article
- An attentional approach to geometrical illusions.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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Abstract
A square filled with parallel horizontal or vertical lines appears perceptually extended in the direction orthogonal to the lines. Here, we suggest that this Helmholtz illusion arises due to changes in spatial attention that entail changes at very early stages of perceptual processing. Three experiments are reported which tested this assumption. In Experiment1 and Experiment2, transient attentional cues were flashed in such a way that they either promoted (congruent condition) or hindered (incongruent condition) the attentional state presumably induced by the target objects. We predicted a decline of the illusion in the incongruent condition compared with the congruent condition. This prediction was confirmed in both experiments. However, the influence of (in)congruent attention cuing on the Helmholtz illusion depended on more sustained distributions of attention as well. An influence of sustained attention on the illusion was confirmed in Experiment 3, in which changes of attentional focus were induced by a secondary task. Overall, the results were consistent with our claim that the origin of the Helmholtz illusion is closely linked to the distribution of spatial attention.
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