Is the Susceptibility to Visual Illusions Related to the Relative Brain Size? Insights from Small-Brained Species

Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews

article

Alessandra Pecunioso¹  Maria Santac๠ Maria Elena Miletto Petrazzini²  Christian Agrillo³ 

[1] Department of General Psychology University of Padova;Queen Mary University of London;Department of General Psychology Padua Neuroscience Center University of Padova

关键词: fish;    reptiles;    amphibians;    visual illusions;    Gestalt;    comparative perception;   

DOI  :  10.3819/CCBR.2020.150003E

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Comparative Cognition Society

【 摘 要 】

Visual illusions are powerful tools to understand similarities and differences in the perceptual mechanisms of human and nonhuman animals. Such investigation is particularly important in the presence of animal species whose brains largely differ from ours, because it can reveal whether perceptual laws described in humans are strictly related to the peculiarity of large brains, as the case of mammals and birds. Here we review the literature on visual illusions in species with a much smaller relative brain size. Most works on this subject have investigated fish, whereas only a few studies have been conducted on amphibians and reptiles. Taken together, the existing literature found more similarities than differences in the perceptual mechanisms underlying size, numerosity, brightness, motion, and subjective contours among vertebrates, regardless of the high variability in the relative brain size of the species.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC-ND