Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Exposure to a common visual illusion may enhance your ability to read fine print, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
"We discovered that visual acuity -- the ability to see fine detail -- can be enhanced by an illusion known as the 'expanding motion aftereffect' -- while under its spell, viewers can read letters that are too small for them to read normally," says psychological scientist Martin Lages of the University of Glasgow.
Visual acuity is normally thought to be dictated by the shape and condition of the eye but these new findings suggest that it may also be influenced by perceptual processes in the brain.
Interest in the intersection between perception and reality led Lages and co-authors Stephanie C. Boyle (University of Glasgow) and Rob Jenkins (University of York) to wonder about visual illusions and how they might affect visual acuity.
"The expanding motion aftereffect can make objects appear larger than they really are and our question was whether this apparent increase in size could bring about the visual benefits associated with actual increases in size," Boyle explains. "In particular, could it make small letters easier to read?"
Journal Reference: Martin Lages, Stephanie C. Boyle, Rob Jenkins. Illusory Increases in Font Size Improve Letter Recognition. Psychological Science, 2017; 095679761770539 DOI: 10.1177/0956797617705391
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:17PM
It will give ISPs, Cable TV operators, and mobile network operators an excuse to use ever finer print in their contracts.
Didn't you see that fine print about 2/3 of the way through the service agreement you signed, on page 223, where you gave permission for your ISP to sneak in the middle of the night and harvest your and your family memebers vital organs? That clause is only waived if your Cable TV provider or Microsoft has already harvested them first.
I don't suppose exposure to this optical illusion helps with 2 or 3 pixel tall fonts? Or sub-pixel sized fonts?
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:24PM (6 children)
Why do clockwise spirals increase visual acuity? Couldn't one use a mirror image of the spiral image, along with counterclockwise motion? Isn't the spin direction related to the design of the spiral?
Anyone who has experienced this knows the effect is fleeting as TFA states. Would prolonged exposure, or repeated exposures have any lasting effect?
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:40PM (4 children)
Well, it's easy: A left spin helps reading small texts by the Democrats, a right spin helps reading small texts by the Republicans. For reading Trump's texts, erratically spinning spirals are recommended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:19PM
No, no no. Its hemispherical: its only clockwise above the equator, if you repeat the study down under you'll find only counter-clockwise spirals achieve the desired effect.
(Score: 5, Funny) by bob_super on Thursday July 13 2017, @05:18PM (2 children)
> For reading Trump's texts, erratically spinning spirals are recommended.
Being drunk helps a lot, for sure.
He's got the first fractal presidency: try to zoom in to get more details, and you end up always staring at the same features which you got from the top level.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:38PM (1 child)
Yep, it's toupee's all the way down!
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:57PM
Tail-recursion is the only depth he has.
That is all.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mcgrew on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:53PM
I found an excellent example of it, [michaelbach.de] since TFA didn't supply one. Stare at the cross until the Buddha image comes, and the effect is striking.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:30PM (1 child)
I wonder how much ink/toner can be saved in a printer if they start to adapt this as a cost-saving mechanism. After all if you print millions pages per year and save some fraction of buck per page ... $$$.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 13 2017, @03:39PM
Let's also print on 2x3 cards and save paper.
Is there a chemotherapy treatment for excessively low blood alcohol level?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:00PM (1 child)
http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/988659-bill-cosby-rape-allegations [knowyourmeme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @04:49PM
Humorless mod, this is on topic.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:48PM (2 children)
Visual acuity is normally thought to be dictated by the shape and condition of the eye but these new findings suggest that it may also be influenced by perceptual processes in the brain.
Wrong. The scientists didn't say that, the article writer assumed it. I had a physics class way back in the 1970s, and learned there that seeing is a product of the brain, not the eye (although the condition of the eye does affect visual acuity). The retina is actually part of the brain!
That was the coolest class I took. Lasers, holograms, all kinds of cool stuff.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by tfried on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:34PM (1 child)
Which does not actually contradict the idea that "visual acuity is influenced by [...] the brain", at all. But if we both stop the smart-assing, I think we'll be able to agree that this is a cool finding underlining the very fact that the human eye is not merely some kind of photo-plate.
One of the cooler aspects of this experiment is that it could literally have been thought up decades (centuries?) ago, as the expanding motion aftereffect is totally an old hat. But nobody did before, as, apparently, nobody thought of this effect as anything more than a plain illusion. It will be interesting to see some theories on where in the brain this effect actually arises. Yes, the retina itself has three(?) layers of neurons itself, for contrast enhancement and edge detection. But I am not aware of any theory accounting for motion aftereffects in those "low-level hardware" layers.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday July 15 2017, @05:14PM
I don't get migraine headaches, but once or twice a year I get optical migraine [pinimg.com]. Scared the hell out of me the first time it happened, so I rushed to the eye doctor. He said that they're not caused by the eye itself, but are 100% from the brain's visual cortex and it was nothing to worry about.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Touché) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday July 13 2017, @06:58PM (4 children)
It's really odd they would make some claims of readability but not even bother to include a demonstration of this in action. The research paper talked about sloan letters, but the lone illustration font size was bigger than the font size of the article itself, or was that just an optical illusion?
(Score: 4, Funny) by inertnet on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:28PM (1 child)
Here you go:
.
(Score: 2) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday July 13 2017, @07:40PM
Oh yea, my bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:26PM (1 child)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r1_ZoQmqxM [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 13 2017, @10:32PM
better one [youtube.com]