24.04.2008 - Visual Perception... The influence of culture and environment can have an effect on our visual perception.This theory was first explored by Robert Laws, a Scottish missionary working in Malawi, Africa, during the late 1800’s. Take a look at the picture below. What you see will largely depend on where you live in the world. After you have examined the picture, what did you see ? What is above the woman’s head? When scientists showed a similar sketch to people from East Africa, nearly all the participants in the experiment said she was balancing a box or metal can on her head. In a culture containing few angular visual cues, the family is seen sitting under a tree. Westerners, on the other hand, are accustomed to the corners and boxlike shapes of architecture. They are more likely to place the family indoors and to interpret the rectangle above the woman’s head as a window through which shrubbery can be seen. after reading i looked again and yeah, i could see that thing at the back as a tree and not the corner of a room, and the window as a box on that womans head. This is an example for the World of shadows: i like those kinds of things.. it clearly demonstrates that what we see is just our brain trying to make since out of things - based on what it knows already; makes you wonder what reality really looks like. Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.  -  Albert Einstein