Ebbinghaus illusion

The Ebbinghaus illusion or Titchener circles is an optical illusion of relative size perception. Named for its discoverer, the German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus (1850–1909), the illusion was popularized in the English-speaking world by Edward B. Titchener in a 1901 textbook of experimental psychology, hence its alternative name. In the best-known version of the illusion, two circles of identical size are placed near each other, and one is surrounded by large circles while the other is surrounded by small circles. As a result of the juxtaposition of circles, the central circle surrounded by large circles appears smaller than the central circle surrounded by small circles.

Recent work suggests that two other critical factors involved in the perception of the Ebbinghaus illusion are the distance of the surrounding circles from the central circle and the completeness of the annulus, which makes the illusion comparable in nature to the Delboeuf illusion. Regardless of relative size, if the surrounding circles are closer to the central circle, the central circle appears larger and if the surrounding circles are far away, the central circle appears smaller. While the distance variable appears to be an active factor in the perception of relative size, the size of the surrounding circles limits how close they can be to the central circle, resulting in many studies confounding the two variables.

Possible explanations

The Ebbinghaus illusion has played a crucial role in the debate over the existence of separate pathways in the brain for perception and action (for more details see Two Streams hypothesis). It has been argued that the Ebbinghaus illusion distorts perception of size, but not action. A study by neuroscientist Melvyn A. Goodale showed that when a subject is required to respond to a physical model of the illusion by grasping the central circle, the scaling of the grip aperture was unaffected by the perceived size distortion.