What can the chance discovery of an illusion tell us about how our eyes and brains work together? Ben Balas from North Dakota State University talks with us in episode 37 about his research into the Flashed Face Distortion Effect, an illusion in which normal faces – when rapidly presented in people’s peripheral vision – are perceived as grotesque and distorted. His article, “Factors that do and don’t affect the strength of the Flashed Face Distortion Effect”, written with Hannah Pearson, was posted to the open-access pre-print server PsyArxiv on June 5, 2018 and published in Nature’s open-access journal Scientific Reports on February 7, 2019 as “The flashed face distortion effect does not depend on face-specific mechanisms.”

 

Websites and other resources

• • The High Level Vision Lab
  • Data and Code for the article on the Open Science Framework
  • Vision Sciences Society’s “Best Illusion of the Year Contest” page

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Music

What’s The Angle? by Shane Ivers

Transcript

Coming soon!