Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

4THE MIND'S EYETo gaze is to think.—SALVADOR DALIPast decades had hula hoops, black-light posters, CB radios, andRubik's cube. The craze of the 1990s is the autostereogram, alsocalled Magic Eye, Deep Vision, and Superstereogram. These arethe computer-generated squiggles that when viewed with crossed eyes ora distant gaze spring into a vivid illusion of three-dimensional, razoredgedobjects majestically suspended in space. The fad is now five yearsold and autostereograms are everywhere, from postcards to Web pages.They have been featured in editorial cartoons, in the Blondie comic strip,and in situation comedies like Seinfeld and Ellen. In one episode, thecomedian Ellen DeGeneres belongs to a reading club that has chosen astereogram book as its weekly selection. Ashamed that she cannot seethe illusions, she sets aside an evening to train herself, without success.In desperation she joins a support group for people who cannot "get"stereograms.Visual illusions fascinated people long before the psychologistChristopher Tyler inadvertently created this sensation in his research onbinocular (two-eyed) vision. Simpler illusions made up of parallel linesthat seem to converge and congruent lines that look unequal have longappeared in cereal-box reading material, Crackerjack prizes, children'smuseums, and psychology courses. Their fascination is obvious. "Whoare you going to believe, me or your own eyes?" says Groucho Marx toMargaret Dumont, playing on our faith that vision is a certain route toknowledge. As the sayings go: I call them as I see them; Seeing is believing;We have an eyewitness; I saw it with my own eyes. But if a devilish211