Illusion news

Access since May 20, 2004


My first book "Introduction to Psychology" has been published! <March 21, 2005>


The silhouette illusion or rotating lady's figure (reversible between clockwise and counterclockwise) is the most striking movie among reversible moving images that I have ever seen. This movie was created by Nobuyuki Kayahara, a web designer, Hiroshima, Japan. <March 16, 2005>


An academic book of illusion, named "Handbook of the Science of Illusion", has been published in Japan, to which I have much contributed. <March 10, 2004> amazon's page


An illusion book entitled "Masters of Deception" authored by Al Seckel, has been published, which includes some of my recent works. This book is amusing and informative. <November 12, 2004> amazon's page


Access to the English page of Akiyoshi's illusion pages increased dramatically on 4th October, 2004. The number was 937,620 on 2nd October, while that became 997,308 at 4:40 pm (Japan time) on 4th October. I got the million number but could not stop my finger click, thus getting the number 1,000,001 as shown below. <October 4, 2004>


One of the most popular illusion designs in my webpage called "Warp" will be adopted on the cover of the 2004 September issue of an academic journal "Trends in Cell Biology" !! <August 30, 2004> PDF file


"Exhibition of Akiyoshi Kitaoka's illusion works" will be held in the Tohoku University on September 5, 2004, where more than 20 images are exhibited and discussed. This exhibition is sponsored by the Japanese Psychological Association. <August 6, 2004>


I found a paper on the extinction illusion. <June 16, 2004>

McAnany, J. J., & Levine, M. W. (2004). The blanking phenomenon: a novel form of visual disappearance. Vision Research, 44, 993-1001.

Related page


I explained the rubber pencil illusion (Pomerantz, 1983) on TV (Toribia no Izumi, Fuji Terebi) yesturday. In Japan, Dr. Kimihiro Suzuki, Taisei Gakuin University, studies this illusion using an apparatus including a really moving bar, as show below. <May 20, 2004>

The apparatus for the experiment of the rubber pencil illusion, in which the inner bar is swayed in a mechanical fashion.


Under movement (taken with long exposure)

icjKimihiro SUZUKI

Suzuki, K. (2002) The rubber pencil illusion. IAEA proceedings, 105-108.

Pomerantz, J. R. (1983) The rubber pencil illusion. Perception & Psychophysics, 33, 365-368.


I have found a motion illusion in the logo of the Society for Neuroscience, in which "SfN" appears to sway right and left. <May 19, 2004>


The illusion design "Rotating snakes" (peripheral drift illusion) was cited in an academic paper ! <2004/4/23>

Ramsoy, T. Z. (2004) The peripheral drift illusion. Science & Consciousness Review, April 1, 1-5. (web page)

its PDF file

Ramsoy's "o" is "ø" (o and /).

It should be noted that the peripheral drift illusion was examined by three papers (Fraser and Wilcox, 1979; Faubert and Herbert, 1999; Naor-Raz and Sekuler, 2000) before Kitaoka and Ashida (2003)*.

*Kitaoka, A. and Ashida, H. (2003) Phenomenal characteristics of the peripheral drift illusion. VISION, 15, 261-262.
its PDF file

Our summary presented in the 2003's summer meeting of the Vision Society of Japan

In this relation, Professor Michael Bach pointed out that Gregory & Heard (1983)** were the first to describe that asymmetric luminance steps cause illusory movement.

**Gregory RL, Heard PF (1983) Visual dissociations of movement, position, and stereo depth: Some phenomenal phenomena. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 35A: 217-237


The Japanese version of "The science of illusions" written by Jacques Ninio has been published ! ISBN4-7885-0888-5@<2004/3/11>


A paper elucidating the phenomenal rule of the Cafe Wall illusion has been published in Perception, Pion Ltd (UK). This paper includes a variety of Cafe Wall-type illusions as well as some novel types. <2004/2/7>

Kitaoka, A., Pinna, B., and Brelstaff, G. (2004). Contrast polarities determine the direction of Cafe Wall tilts. Perception, 33, 11-20.

Cafe Wall illusion --- My paper list


A calender for 2004, which is filled with illusion design, has been created by Fuji P.I.T. These designs are the first that included illusion design effectively. This calender is not sold. Correspondence should be addressed to Mr. Kazuo Nami, the chief designer and producer. <2003/12/24>


One of the most popular illusion designs in my webpage called "Rotating snakes" was displayed on the cover of the 2003 december issue of the "Trends in Cell Biology" !! <2003/12/10>


Our brief paper on the basic illusion of the "Rotating snakes" or other images, the peripheral drift illusion, has been published. <2003/10/24>

Kitaoka, A. and Ashida, H. (2003) Phenomenal characteristics of the peripheral drift illusion. VISION, 15, 261-262.
PDF file

Please click it, and you can download the PDF file and you can get the secret (?) of the peripheral drift illusion !


One of the most popular illusion designs in my webpage called "Rotating snakes" will be shown on the cover of the 2003 december issue of an academic journal "Trends in Cell Biology" !! <2003/10/14> PDF file


I designed the cover of the program of the 2003's joint meeting of the Japanese Society for Animal Psychology and the Japanese Psychonomic Society. <2003/10/6> The cover (I am sorry this page is written in Japanese)


When I examined the origins of geometrical illusions, I encountered the fact that the Ponzo illusion was first proposed by Lipps (1897, p. 224), not by Ponzo (1912). The figure shown below is a copy from his book.

Lipps, T. (1897) Raumästhetik und geometrisch-optische Täuschungen. Leipzig: Barth.

P.S. This fact was already mentioned by Vicario (1978). <December 2, 2004>
Vicario G. B. (1978) Another optical-geometrical illusion. Perception, 7, 225-228.
Thanks to Walter

A new digital archive of visual images named "Viperlib" (Visual Perception Library directed by Professor Peter Thompson, University of York, UK) has been published, where some of my works are included. <2003/8/26>

We all know what it's like trying to find images when we're putting together a conference presentation, lecture or seminar. The Viperlib project is creating a central web-based resource where we can pool images, animations and presentation material of value to the vision community. (from the notice)

The web page of the Vision Society of Japan appears to tilt counterclockwise. Any font will do. <2003/7/30>


The Ouchi illusion was found out in the cover of a book of abnormal psychology published in 1980. It is a pity that there is no name of the designer, but the 1980 is near 1973 in that Ouchi originally published the design book in Japanese (the English version is published in 1977). <2003/6/17>

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