Cognitive Daily

There’s nothing cooler for a perception researcher (or writer) than a new visual illusion. When I learned about this one, I spent half the day Thursday trying to recreate it, but I couldn’t get it to work. Finally, in five minutes on Friday morning, I think I figured it out. (Update: Actually, as it turned out, I didn’t figure it out at all. In the meantime, Chris from Mixing Memory pointed me to Shams’ web page with much better demos. So let’s try this again, using one of Shams’ demos.) Play the movie and watch for a dot flashing in the middle of the screen. Make sure you’ve got the sound turned up on your computer — the flash will be accompanied by beeps. How many times does the dot flash?

Let’s make this one a poll:

If this works, most respondents should say the dot flashed two times. Actually it only flashes once. You can convince yourself of this by moving the slider slowly back and forth.

This illusion was discovered by Ladan Shams, Yukiyasu Katmitani, and Shinsuke Shimojo, who claim that the three auditory beats cause the phenomenon to be perceived visually. But is the illusion really a visual phenomenon, or is there some other explanation? In a separate study, Shams’ team systematically explores the phenomenon. First, they showed viewers movies with different numbers of auditory stimuli accompanying the flash (they used beeps instead of drumbeats). Here’s the result:

As the number of beeps increases, so does the perceived number of flashes. Next, they tried the same test and actually varied the number of flashes, while playing just one or no beeps. Viewers were accurate in reporting how many flashes they saw.

In these tasks, the beeps and flashes were spaced about 60 milliseconds apart. Will the illusion still occur, no matter fast or slowly the beeps are played? In a second experiment, the viewers saw movies with one flash and two beeps. One beep was always synchronized with the flash, but the second beep was played at varying distances from the first beep, up to 250 milliseconds before or after. Here’s a chart of how likely viewers were to see multiple flashes

The phenomenon only occurs when the beeps are about 100 milliseconds or less apart. Here’s a movie with beats about 200 milliseconds apart:

Do you see the difference from the first movie?

Shams’s team also notes that this is a one-way phenomenon: You don’t perceive multiple beeps when there are many flashes, but you do perceive multiple flashes with multiple beeps. Fascinating stuff!

Shams, L., Kamitani, Y., & Shimojo, S. (2002). Visual illusion induced by sound. Cognitive Brain Research, 14, 147-152.

Comments

#1 Ami M. Echeverri
October 23, 2006

I saw only one flash, but it wasn’t until I read to the end of your article that I realized you intended for me to watch the movie with sound. Given that the early poll results contradict the expected findings (expected: most respondents will report multiple flashes; actual: 15 report single flashes and seven report multiple flashes), I’m guessing that I’m not only one who did not realize that sound’s important for this one.
#2 Dave Munger
October 23, 2006

Ami, you may be right. I’ve changed the instructions. We had 23 votes for 1 flash and 6 votes for 2 flashes when I changed them — we’ll see if that makes any difference.
#3 Nottma
October 23, 2006

I find the conclusion is only true with me, when you don’t know where the dot will flash. Knowing it will appear in a specific location, its simple to detect it only occurs once.
#4 Dave Munger
October 23, 2006

Uh-oh, still not working, even with the correct instructions. One difference between the study and my replication is that people participating in the study see the illusion over and over. I’m noticing that I seem to see the illusion more frequently now that I’ve played around with it. Anyone else experiencing this?
#5 Brian
October 23, 2006

I think it’s possible your instructions are tipping people off. I know I paid more attention to the sight than the sound, thinking that’s where the trick was.

Of course, if it’s a ‘trick’, it’s not really an illusion is it? I mean, in an illusion the lines seems to bend and the circles to be different shapes even though I know what’s happening.
#6 Dave Munger
October 23, 2006

“Of course, if it’s a ‘trick’, it’s not really an illusion is it? I mean, in an illusion the lines seems to bend and the circles to be different shapes even though I know what’s happening.”

Brian, I think there are two possible explanations for our lack of replication here. The first is that it takes awhile to accommodate to the illusion, so you’re not going to see it the first time you watch the movie. The second is that I wasn’t able to generate an appropriate “beep” — the best I could do was a drumbeat that reverberated much longer than in the original study, so it may not stimulate the visual “flash” as readily.

In the original study, both naive and non-naive observers experienced the illusion, so it is a genuine illusion.
#7 Dave Munger
October 23, 2006

Update:

Check out the real thing!

Ladan Shams’ Illusions

I think you’ll agree this is a much more robust illusion.
#8 Dave Munger
October 23, 2006

Okay, I’ve substituted Sham’s illusion for my original attempt. I think we’ll get much better results now…
#9 mick grierson
October 23, 2006

Isn’t the original paper about 6 years old? It’s a good solid basis for alot of interesting work in the audiovisual arts at the moment. I’m not a neuroscientist (I’m an audiovisual artist), but I think this is caused by multisensory cells in the superior colliculus. Similar to the McGurk Effect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect
#10 Dado
October 23, 2006

>> One difference between the study and my replication is that people participating in the study see the illusion over and over.

I hesitated between one and two flashes when I saw the movie for the first time. As I noticed immediatly that there were very close beeps, I suspected that the goal of the experiment was to make people see two flashes instead of one, what I verified by seing the movie another time. That’s why I replied 1. But I may have said 2 during another experiment.
#11 sparc
October 23, 2006

Does this somehow relate to numerical priming, anchoring or hindsight bias?
#12 Raymond
October 24, 2006

These audio-video illusions seem to fail again with me! Can someone post the theory as to why our brains should link visual and audio clues in such a fashion? I can imagine hearing a loud bang and imagining all kinds of things as something to run away from!
#13 G. Shelley
October 27, 2006

The first movie, I see very clearly just one flash, the second I am not sure, I think I see two. It’s an odd experience anyway, looking at the screen and not knowing if I saw a second flash come with the second beep.
#14 Chinh Do
October 28, 2006

I saw one flash. When I heard the two beeps I “knew” it was designed to fool me into seeing two flashes so I still saw one. I guess I am not a good test subject.
#15 Freud Wore A Slip?
February 18, 2007

All this reminds me that people often (sometimes?) report hearing a sound when they see a meteor. It happened once to me, and I couldn’t find any physics that would account for the sound–the meteor is to far away for slow moving sound to be heard simultaneously, for example.

Are these related phenomena, somehow, I wonder?
#16 Michael
May 24, 2007

http://www.grand-illusions.com/opticalillusions/
#17 Fran
November 24, 2008

I saw two events, but only saw one dot flashing. The two events are white changing to black, then black changing to white.

If I had not known what to expect, I might have thought I saw two flashes.

In my younger days, I might have saw two flashes. My 67 years of experience told me that the two events were not two dots flashing, but the dot appearing and disappearing, so my reasoning told me it was one dot.

When I went to the link that showed the same thing (with reversed colors) with two beeps and with one beep, It was obvious that the dot flashed only once with one beep. I didn’t have to use any reasoning to interpret it. With two beeps, I noticed the two events (color change) much more dramatically, and had to use reasoning to conclude there was only one flash.