Jimmy looks at a picture of a side of a submarine that has dents and bumps on it. When he turns the picture upside-down, what he originally perceived as bumps, now look like dents, and vice versa. This is due to
A) figure-ground reversal.
B) the oblique effect.
C) accidental properties of light.
D) the "light-from-above" heuristic.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The "light-from-above" heuristic is a perceptual bias where people assume that light sources come from above, so when viewing a picture of an object with bumps and dents, we assume the light is coming from above and perceive the bumps as raised and the dents as indented. When the picture is turned upside-down, our perceptual bias is still assuming the light is coming from above, causing us to see the bumps as dents and the dents as bumps. This is not figure-ground reversal, which refers to the perception of an object as standing out from its surroundings, nor the oblique effect, which refers to the difficulty in recognizing objects in oblique orientations. Accidental properties of light are not relevant to this phenomenon.

Jimmy Looks at a Picture of a Side of a Submarine