A size illusion of the letter ‘P’

The perceived size of ‘P’ and ‘p’ is influenced by their vertical position relative to nearby letters. In the experiments reported here, we show that uppercase ‘P’ appears smallest when it is displaced downward toward the letter’s lowercase position, whereas lowercase ‘p’ appears largest when it is...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Vision research (Oxford) 2000-01, Vol.40 (4), p.401-407
Main Authors: Katz, Milton, Pola, Jordan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Letter perception
Optical Illusions
Perception
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Psychometrics
Size Perception
Vision
Visual illusions
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:The perceived size of ‘P’ and ‘p’ is influenced by their vertical position relative to nearby letters. In the experiments reported here, we show that uppercase ‘P’ appears smallest when it is displaced downward toward the letter’s lowercase position, whereas lowercase ‘p’ appears largest when it is near the uppercase position. Our results show that this P-illusion not only occurs in the presence of nearby letters, but is also found when ‘P’ is displaced relative to a nearby horizontal line. This type of size illusion seems to clearly occur only with ‘P’ and ‘p’, and we suggest that it is a result of learning to read and recognize letters in the English alphabet.
ISSN:0042-6989
1878-5646
DOI:10.1016/S0042-6989(99)00192-3