ABSTRACT
Since the visual system is composed of a series of stages, the first step in our psychanatomical dissection of visual illusions must be to decide where to enter the system in order to begin the analysis. Conceptually, there is a kind of natural dividing point at the juncture where the optical neural structure can no longer predict the final percept and cognitive processing or judgmental strategies must be taken into account. Traditionally, psychologists have called this the division between psysiological mechanisms and cognitive mechanisms. This chapter examines a single illusion configuration to show how the distortion manifested in consciousness was actually an amalgam of a number of different mechanisms, all acting in consort to produce the illusory effect. In summary, we may look at most illusory percepts as representing the combined effects of many levels of information extraction in the visual system. These levels include both structural and strategy components.
