Talk:Numerosity adaptation effect

A fact from Numerosity adaptation effect appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 6 April 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the numerosity adaptation effect demonstrates that we not only have a direct and automatic visual sense of the reddishness of half a dozen ripe cherries, but also of their quantity?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2010/April.

Wikipedia

Seriously?

Is there a better example of this somewhere? It seems obvious to me that the effect behind the "green US flag" optical illusion could easily explain this example.

If you look at a white surface after staring at the top pair for 30 seconds, you will perceive a black left-side circle with a few white dots and a black right-side circle with many white dots. If, instead, you look at the bottom pair (as in the example), the perceived black right-side circle's many white dots compete with the pictured white right-side circle's black dots, thus decreasing your perception of their numerosity; whereas, on the left side, there is no visual overlap between the perceived black left-side circle's few white dots and the pictured white left-side circle's black dots.

The difference in perceived numerosity between the two sides can therefore be explained by the fact that on the bottom left, you see all the black dots without competition, while on the bottom right, you can't see all the black dots at once due to competition from overlapping perceived white dots.

I could be wrong, and if someone can find a counterexample where this is shown to be a poor explanation, I think the article would be improved. If I'm right, I hope that not too many false conclusions have been drawn from believing in this "adaptation effect." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.194.75.35 (talk) 18:45, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The original experiment used equal numbers of black and white dots on a neutral gray background, so this wouldn't explain the effect. However, those images from the publication are copyrighted, and as wikipedia requires everything to be non-copyrighted, or based on fair use, someone else created this demonstration. It is certainly possible to make a better demonstration, but perhaps you should read all of the sources (i.e., the original scientific literature) before deciding to undertake that, as there are numerous other parameters (density, contrast, etc) that have to be taken into consideration. Edhubbard (talk) 19:18, 12 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Should the example image be improved?

It didn't work for me. Doubledork (talk) 17:05, 14 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]