An optical illusion is an incorrect perception of reality caused by misinterpretation of visual information by the brain. (Sparknotes 2016) This essay will be exploring a cognitive optical illusion; that is an illusion that is the result of unconscious inferences. The illusion will be described in detail and a photo will be attached. This visual illusion is described by a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia. This essay seeks to explain a pareidolia optical illusion I experienced in terms of top down processing and perceptual sets.
One night while having a midnight conversation with my housemate, something caught my eye. He had shuffled in his bed and an area of the doona just happened to resemble a human face. The creation of the face…show more content… Pareidolia causes people to interpret random images as faces. Although we tend to think our eyes accurately report information from the physical environment, the retina actually records an imperfect and confusing image that needs to be processed by the visual cortex. Therefore, pareidolia is a function of what is known as top down processing. Top down processing is a theory of visual perception that argues stimulus from the environment is ambiguous so to interpret it, we require higher cognitive information from past experiences or prior knowledge in order to make inferences about what we perceive. (McLeod, 2007) An outcome of visual top down processing is perceptual set. This is the predisposition to perceive objects in a certain way based on expectations and experiences. (Sparknotes 2016) The brain does this because it is programmed to find patterns in order to reduce uncertainty. However, this makes our vision somewhat subjective, in that you see what you want to see. (Robson, 2014) Faces are arguably one of the things we see most in our lives. We see up to thousands of them daily. We interact with them at close proximity. We stare at them in the mirror. And we are all familiar with the features that constitute a face. We recognize the ratios and positioning of facial structures. We essentially understand every
