Host: The Japanese Society for Cognitive Psychology
Size illusion such as hallway illusion is that although retinal sizes of two objects in the
hallway are identical, the perceived size changes based on the location of the objects in the
hallway. Recent evidence suggests that neural activity in V1, the first site of visual
processing in the cortex, seem to be modulated by the perceived size, not by the retinal
size. Furthermore, the receptive field of V1 neurons may change its spatial characteristics
due to the illusion. These findings suggest that the hallway illusion can occur as rapid as the
processing speed of a visual stimulus reaches V1. We tested this hypothesis using a
behavioral paradigm, in which we varied the stimulus duration and used visual masking. The
results show that hallway illusion does not depend on the stimulus duration nor whether or
not the visual masking was used, which is consistent with the previous findings.
