Tell me about your Ponzo and I will tell you who you are

Unlike in cognition, audition and somatosensation, performance between various visual tasks does not correlate. Surprisingly, even tasks that appear similar, like visual acuity and line bisection task do not share much common variance. Similar results were found for visual illusions. For example, the Ebbinghaus and the Müller-Lyer illusions correlate very weakly. The high intra- and inter-observer variability in visual perception is possibly due to perceptual learning, i.e., individual experience shaping perception throughout one’s life time. Here, we studied the relationship between illusion strength and high-level factors such as personality traits (O-Life) and the vividness of mental imagery (VVIQ). In line with previous findings, we found only few correlations between the magnitudes of the visual illusions, despite having high test-retest reliability. More interestingly, we found a high, positive correlation between the magnitude of the Ponzo illusion and vividness of mental imagery. Moreover, the magnitude of the Ponzo illusion was negatively correlated with cognitive disorganization personality trait. These results were specific to the Ponzo-type illusions. Principal component analysis revealed one factor, with high weights mainly on the Ponzo-type illusions, cognitive disorganization and the vividness of mental imagery.