Operation Angles (carpentered environments): the influence of right angles
- Carpentered environment: virtually all of the corners that we see in our everyday environment are 90 degree angles
- Unless we're looking straight on at something, the angles we actually see are not 90 degrees; the images that form on our retinas are typically trapezoids of various shapes and sizes. From extensive experience, our brains know that they should really be rectangles and right angles. So our brains use these altered shapes to infer depth information, which in our recto-linear world is almost always correct. This is case for a trapezoidal window, which is what allows for this illusion.