I never recognized that even though we cut the original image to so small, the illusion still exists. I wonder whether it exists because those pixels are already enough to produce illusion, or it is because this graph is just so famous that our brain makes up the rest of the image (or maybe because the slides are shown in a decreasing way, so that the precious image actually still exists in our memory).
joeyzhao123
I think it's just the fact that there is a gradient in the middle that gives our brains the assumption that it's getting lighter.
sharhar
I think a part of it is the gradient, but another part is that by seeing all the slides before this one, our brain was already preconditioned to view those squares as different colors. If we were just shown this image with no other context, I don't think the effectiveness of the illusion here would be as good as it is.
I never recognized that even though we cut the original image to so small, the illusion still exists. I wonder whether it exists because those pixels are already enough to produce illusion, or it is because this graph is just so famous that our brain makes up the rest of the image (or maybe because the slides are shown in a decreasing way, so that the precious image actually still exists in our memory).
I think it's just the fact that there is a gradient in the middle that gives our brains the assumption that it's getting lighter.
I think a part of it is the gradient, but another part is that by seeing all the slides before this one, our brain was already preconditioned to view those squares as different colors. If we were just shown this image with no other context, I don't think the effectiveness of the illusion here would be as good as it is.