Absolutely Crazy..

This week in class we talked about sight and perception. I found perceptual constancy really interesting. We looked at a few pictures and illusions showing shape, color, and size constancy, but my favorite were the color constancy ones. Color constancy is the perception that familiar objects have a constant color, even while illumination varies.

This was one of the images we looked at in class. You can see that the ground is a pattern of light and dark gray squares. There is also a shadow from the green cylinder. When you look at the square labeled A, it looks to be dark gray. When you look at the square labeled B, it looks to be dark gray. Next is the part that totally blew my mind..both squares A and B are the exact same color. Crazy, I know! I was trying to figure out a way to prove it and I figured out that if you slouch down really far in your chair and look at them, you can see that they are in fact the same color. It all has to do with the way the image lies on the retina.