Hot and cold drinks vending machines are situated at the foot of the stairwell in George Square. One remarkable characteristic of our visual world is that it is amply predictable.
Objects tend to be smooth, symmetric, and move like rigid bodies.
Gathering these regularities can significantly improve the speed and accuracy of visual processing. In this talk, I shall discuss how your visual system seems to have learned two of these regularities dealing with where you are and where the light source is. The evidence comes from the use of simple line drawings that produce a percept of embossed surfaces. If viewed long enough, these figures reverse between convex and concave impressions. However, consistent first interpretations were found under short exposure, depending on the orientation of the figure in the image plane.