Perception of Munker–White illusion in 4–8-month-old infants

Abstract

There have been numerous studies of the Munker–White illusion, but few have focused on the perceptual development of it in human infants. Therefore, this study explores the perceptual development of the Munker–White illusion in infants. In this study, we created two kinds of Munker–White illusion patterns that had different subjective saturation, and investigated infants’ preference for these two kinds of patterns. Previous studies have shown that infants had a preference for high colorimetric saturation stimuli. Therefore, if infants could perceive the Munker–White illusion, we postulated that they would show a preference for stimuli that have high subjective saturation. In experiment 1, 4–8-month-old infants showed a preference for the stimuli that had a higher subjective saturation. In experiment 2, we confirmed that the preference shown in experiment 1 was not dependent on the difference of the ‘color area ratio’ that existed in the stimuli of experiment 1. Our results suggest that 4–8-month-old infants can perceive Munker–White illusion.