Study reveals human eyes play ‘tricks’ on minds

According to a new study, the human visual system can ‘trick’ the brain into generating incorrect assumptions about the size of objects in their environment. The research is published in the journal PLoS ONE. The research findings could have implications for many aspects of everyday life, such as driving, how eye witness accounts are treated in the criminal justice system, and security issues, such as drone sightings. The research team from the University of York and Aston University presented participants with photographs of full-scale railway scenes, which had the upper and lower parts of the image blurred, as well photographs of small-scale models of railways that were not blurred. Participants were asked to compare each image and decide which was the ‘real’ full-scale railway scene. The results were that participants perceived that the blurred real trains were smaller than the models. Dr Daniel Baker, from the University of York’s Department of Psychology, said: “In order for us to determine the real size of objects that we see around us, our visual system needs to estimate the distance to the object.