The Ponzo Illusion Study

The Ponzo Illusion is a study that uses geometrical-optical illusions that were first created by psychologist Mario Ponzo. The Ponzo Illusion uses a set of two horizontal lines that are laid across a set of vertical lines making it look like a train track. When looking at an image of both sets of lines, it creates the illusion that the picture is in three-dimensional. However, due to the three-dimensional image, some lines appear to be farther away than others, just as some appear to be closer than others. Mario Ponzo's created this illusion to prove his hypothesis, that because of an object's background, the brain will make judgments about the objects size. He doses this by using comparing data between five controlled trials (where the background …show more content…
For example, Theodore E Parks, a professor of psychology at the University of California, uses the concept of depth-processing and the size-scaling theory to support Mario Ponzo's hypothesis further. Parks says in the article On depth processing in the production of the Ponzo illusion, "First, the illusion may well occur even when the inducing pattern consciously appears to be two-dimensional, the requisite (in this case the illusory) distances being independent of the consciously perceived flatness. And second, the physical size of one of the lines would, of course, appear to be greater, that being the size assigned to it by the scaling process in the unconscious stream (2013)." While there is some scientist who uses the original Ponzo Illusion guidelines; some try to take them a step farther. For example, In the study done by Joshua J. Dobias that looked at if retinal size had any effect on the Ponzo Illusion, did so by adding different elements to the experiment. By adding different elements to the experiment, they were able to find that there are some correlations between the size of the retina and the