Specific visual expertise reduces susceptibility to visual illusions

Wincza, Radoslaw, Hartley, Calum, Donovan, Tim, Linkenauger, Sally, Crawford, Trevor, Griffiths, Debra and Doherty, Martin (2025) Specific visual expertise reduces susceptibility to visual illusions. Scientific Reports, 15. ISSN 2045-2322

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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.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Data availability: The data described in this paper can be obtained upon request from the first author.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Psychology
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > UEA Experimental Philosophy Group Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Developmental Science
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	06 Feb 2025 12:32
Last Modified:	28 Mar 2025 13:11
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/98403
DOI:	10.1038/s41598-025-88178-y

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