Visual Perception: Scientific Lessons Learned From “The Dress” Phenomenon

Abstract

Our visual percept across the population is relatively similar with little or no ambiguity in what we perceive. A red flower on a green plant is still perceived as red flower by everyone. So when social media threw up a picture of a dress which was not agreed by everyone about the colour, it created an exception to our general perceptual stability and created an enigma for visual scientists to explain this apparent contradiction to relatively stable percept. This mini review aims to explain “the dress” phenomenon and provide theories explaining this illusion that has confounded many vision scientists.