Behavioral evidence for rapid and robust size illusion

抄録

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.