Perceived Visual Angle - A Relatively New Idea

A Relatively New Idea

Visual angle illusions have been explicitly described by many vision researchers, including Joynson (1949), (McCready 1963, 1965, 1985, 1999), Rock & McDermott (1964), Baird (1970), Ono (1970), Roscoe (1985, 1989), Hershenson (1982, 1989), Reed (1984, 1989), Enright (1989), Plug & Ross (1989, 1994), Higashiyama & Shimono (1994), Gogel, & Eby (1997), Ross & Plug (2002), and Murray, Boyaci & Kersten (2006). Specifically, these researchers cited have advocated a relatively new idea: that many of the best-known size illusions demonstrate that for most observers the (subjective) perceived visual angle, θ′, can change for a viewed target that subtends a constant (physical) visual angle θ.

Indeed, various experiments have revealed most of the factors responsible for these visual angle illusions, and a few different explanations for them have been published (Baird, Wagner, & Fuld, 1990, Enright, 1987, 1989, Hershenson, 1982, 1989, Komoda & Ono, 1974, McCready, 1965, 1985, 1986, 1994, Ono, 1970, Oyama, 1977, Reed, 1984, 1989, Restle, 1970, Roscoe, 1985, 1989).

On the other hand, nearly all discussions (and explanations) of those classic size illusions found in textbooks, the popular media, and on the internet use, instead, an older hypothesis that the visual angle is not perceivable (Gregory, 2008, Kaufman & Kaufman, 2002). They can describe and explain only a linear size illusion, which is why they do not properly describe or explain the illusions that most people experience.

In order to clarify the new paradigm which replaces the old one, it helps to keep in mind that an angle is the difference between two directions from a common point (the vertex). Accordingly, as described below, the visual angle θ is the difference between two real (optical) directions in the field of view, while the perceived visual angle θ′, is the difference by which the directions of two viewed points from oneself appear to differ in the visual field.