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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">There are individual differences, but they have not been much studied until the recent push by Jeremy Willmer at VSS.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">I had a brilliant undergraduate at Columbia, who went on to be a star grad student at MIT, has done start-ups, been CTO of multiple companies, won an Emmy, etc etc, and he had no simultaneous brightness or color induction, as measured by objective methods (nulling on a 2AFC adaptive staircase). He was also a meticulous observer in motion experiments, where he saw all kinds of effects.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">You may want to see what else is different about these students. I suspect that they will be normal on low level detection and discrimination experiments, but that may still be worth checking.</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Cheers</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">QZ</font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Qasim Zaidi PhD</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">SUNY Distinguished Professor </font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Graduate Center for Vision Research, </font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">State University of New York College of Optometry,</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">33 West 42nd St, New York, NY 10036.</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Office: 212-938-5542; Lab: 212-938-5756; Fax: 212-938-5537</font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">E-mail: <a href="mailto:qz@sunyopt.edu">qz@sunyopt.edu</a></font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Helvetica Neue Light" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica Neue Light;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;"><a href="http://poseidon.sunyopt.edu/Zaidi/index.php" target="_blank">http://poseidon.sunyopt.edu/Zaidi/index.php</a></font></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><font face="Lucida Grande" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Lucida Grande;font-size:10pt;color:#000000;"><b>"Dr. Katherine Moore" <<a href="mailto:moorek@arcadia.edu">moorek@arcadia.edu</a>> writes:</b></font></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Dear vision experts, </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">I was hoping some of you could help me out with something that made me curious all of last semester. Last semester was about the fifth time I've taught Sensation & Perception. Even though my classes are small (less than 25 students), each time I teach this course I have a student or two who is unusual in some sensory way -- just one working eye, synesthesia, no sense of smell, blind, prosopagnosia, etc. </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">This past semester I had two students who did not experience illusions (out of just 10 students!) One of them truly did not experience any of the illusions. Another did not experience the vast majority of them. We mostly did visual illusions, but among the few auditory illusions we did, these students didn't experience them either. I have no reason to think the students were lying about it--they are very sincere people. And they both had trouble with an assignment that required students to view some new illusions, describe what they saw and what was really happening, and explain the illusion. These two students didn't see what the rest of the class saw, and only saw "what was really happening."</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">The illusions spanned the course, which is to say they touched upon many different causes. For example, the Hermann grid variations, including the "disappearing dots" one that went viral this summer/fall were affected, as well as the color constancy and size constancy ones like the checkershadow illusion, Ames room, etc. </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">What do you all know about this, like what the cause could be for this immunity from illusions of many kinds, or individual variation in the experience of illusions? </font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Best,</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="+0" color="#000000" style="font-family:Times New Roman;font-size:12pt;color:#000000;">Katherine</font></span></div>
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<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">Katherine S Moore</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">Assistant Professor of Psychology</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">Arcadia University</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">450 S. Easton Rd</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">Glenside, PA 19038</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">Office: Boyer Hall room 128</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" color="#000000" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;color:#000000;">Phone: (215) 517-2429</font></span></div>
<div align="left" style="text-align:left;"><a href="https://sites.google.com/a/arcadia.edu/amclab/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color:#d0d0d0;"><font face="Helvetica" size="-1" style="font-family:Helvetica;font-size:9pt;">https://sites.google.com/a/arcadia.edu/amclab/</font></span></a></div>
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