An ambulance passes you on the highway and speeds into the distance. As the ambulance gets farther away, its retinal image shrinks. Nevertheless, you still perceive the ambulance as being the same size. How do you arrive at this conclusion?
A)You use the Gestalt principle called the law of good continuation.
B)The brain integrates information about the size of the retinal image and the relative distance of the ambulance.
C)You rely on the cues of relative size and overlap to determine the size of the ambulance.
D)The retinal image of the ambulance shrinks, but binocular cues and accommodation help us determine its actual size and location.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The brain integrates information about the size of the retinal image and the relative distance of the ambulance. This process is known as size constancy, where the brain takes into account the size of the retinal image and adjusts our perception of the size of the object based on our distance from it. As the ambulance gets farther away, its retinal image shrinks, but our brain automatically adjusts for this change in order to perceive it as being the same size.

An Ambulance Passes You on the Highway and Speeds into the Distance