Open AccessZen Mountains: An Illusion of Perceptual Transparency
Author(s) -
Susan G. Wardle,
Thomas A. Carlson
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
i-perception
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.64
H-Index - 26
ISSN - 2041-6695
DOI - 10.1068/i0723sas
Subject(s) - gestalt psychology , illusion , transparency (behavior) , perception , artificial intelligence , heuristics , segmentation , computer vision , computer science , visual perception , optical illusion , cognitive psychology , psychology , computer security , neuroscience , operating system
The human visual system is usually very successful in segmenting complex natural scenes. During a trip to the Nepalese Himalayas, we observed an impossible example of Nature's beauty: "transparent" mountains. The scene is captured in a photograph in which a pair of mountain peaks viewed in the far distance appear to be transparent. This illusion results from a fortuitous combination of lighting and scene conditions, which induce an erroneous integration of multiple segmentation cues. The illusion unites three classic principles of visual perception: Metelli's constraints for perceptual transparency, the Gestalt principle of good continuation, and depth from contrast and atmospheric scattering. This real-world "failure" of scene segmentation reinforces how ingeniously the human visual system typically integrates complex sources of perceptual information using heuristics based on likelihood as shortcuts to veridical perception.