Geometrical illusions in solid objects under ordinary viewing conditions

The Müller-Lyer and Ponzo illusions were obtained under free binocular viewing of three-dimensional objects, and the function relating magnitude of illusion to fin angle, characteristic of converging-line versions of the Müller-Lyer pattern, was closely paralleled by volumetric (three-cone), line-free objects (but not with an erect, planar “walk-through” construction and moving observers). Illusions cannot be dismissed as artifacts of static, impoverished viewing, therefore, but must be explained within any general theory of perception. Perspective explanations have difficulties with such three-dimensional manifestations, and seem completely inapplicable to our further finding that approximately the same amount of illusion occurred in objects and patterns with no oblique lines or edges. Confusion or averaging theories, not themselves tested here, remain unthreatened by these data.