Context: Culture and Visual Illusions

Recently, a cognitive psychologist wanted to investigate whether growing up in different physical environments affects susceptibility to visual illusions.

She tested two groups of participants:

• Group A: Teenagers raised in a highly urbanised city in North America, living in modern rectangular apartments and gridded streets.
• Group B: Teenagers raised in a rural, pastoralist community in Mongolia, living in traditional round yurts set on open, uncarpentered steppes.

The researcher presented both groups with the Müller-Lyer illusion to measure their susceptibility to the visual distortion. She found that Group A was significantly more susceptible to the illusion than Group B.

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The investigation of different environmental groups outlined above is a quasi-experiment.