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Specific Visual Expertise Reduces Susceptibility to Visual Illusions

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
Article number5948
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>13/03/2025
<mark>Journal</mark>Scientific Reports
Issue number1
Volume15
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Extensive exposure to specific kinds of imagery tunes visual perception, enhancing recognition and interpretation abilities relevant to those stimuli (e.g. radiologists can rapidly extract important information from medical scans). For the first time, we tested whether specific visual expertise induced by professional training also affords domain-general perceptual advantages. Experts in medical image interpretation (n = 44; reporting radiographers, trainee radiologists, and certified radiologists) and a control group consisting of psychology and medical students (n = 107) responded to the Ebbinghaus, Ponzo, Müller-Lyer, and Shepard Tabletops visual illusions in forced-choice tasks. Our results show that medical image experts were significantly less susceptible to all illusions except for the Shepard Tabletops, demonstrating superior perceptual accuracy. These findings could possibly be attributed to a stronger local processing bias, a by-product of learning to focus on specific areas of interest by disregarding irrelevant context in their domain of expertise.