Maybe the people who can see those things with their eyes uncovered lack stereo vision?
Since I was a child I found that when I close one eye, light sources (against a sufficiently dark surroundings) change their appearance… Similar to a lensflare effect. Works with each eye individually, but with both eyes open these artifacts disappear. I always figured these are optical phenomena which will be identified as such by the brain by comparison between both eyes and therefore eliminated.
So if someone lacks stereo vision, or has a significant impairment of the stereo vision system, this might explain this polarizing phenomenon. However, maybe I’m in error and those two phenomena are apples and oranges.
Hm, I don’t think it’s likely a function of basic differences in visual perception—I have normal vision as far as I’m concerned, but I have very vivid mental imagery. I also have very vivid dreamscapes, and every dream I have is a new scape—I’ve never had the same one twice. (Unrelatedly or relatedly, I dream A LOT, even when I doze off for 5-10 minutes.) In any case, I can be physically looking at something in the real world, but be “looking” at something completely different in my mind’s eye, but there is a definite shift in attention that facilitates how much information I can get from either the current sensory input or the mental image.
Maybe the people who can see those things with their eyes uncovered lack stereo vision?
Since I was a child I found that when I close one eye, light sources (against a sufficiently dark surroundings) change their appearance… Similar to a lensflare effect. Works with each eye individually, but with both eyes open these artifacts disappear. I always figured these are optical phenomena which will be identified as such by the brain by comparison between both eyes and therefore eliminated.
So if someone lacks stereo vision, or has a significant impairment of the stereo vision system, this might explain this polarizing phenomenon. However, maybe I’m in error and those two phenomena are apples and oranges.
Hm, I don’t think it’s likely a function of basic differences in visual perception—I have normal vision as far as I’m concerned, but I have very vivid mental imagery. I also have very vivid dreamscapes, and every dream I have is a new scape—I’ve never had the same one twice. (Unrelatedly or relatedly, I dream A LOT, even when I doze off for 5-10 minutes.) In any case, I can be physically looking at something in the real world, but be “looking” at something completely different in my mind’s eye, but there is a definite shift in attention that facilitates how much information I can get from either the current sensory input or the mental image.