Lighthouse beams are often perceived as bent rather than straight, and observers sometimes infer that a rotating lighthouse beam originates from a ``phantom lighthouse'' that lies in the opposite direction from the true source of the beam. We argue that both illusions arise as a result of Bayesian inference based on natural scene statistics and support our argument by implementing a formal computational model. In addition to capturing both illusions, our model makes the novel predictions that a beam viewed from the side is perceived to bend towards the observer, and that the phantom lighthouse illusion should only emerge at a critical point at which the observer is located around 75 metres in front of the true source of a rotating lighthouse beam. Our theory therefore motivates a future line of experimental work, and contributes to a broader body of research that explains perceptual phenomena (including visual illusions) in terms of Bayesian inference.

Visual Snow is a neurological condition that is experienced as an ‘augmented’ reality of auras, glowing lines, depression, anxiety and depersonalisation. Whilst Visual Snow produces a collection of different symptoms, it is clinically recognised. A commonly experienced visual symptom is described as the 'persistent effect of television “snow”', and was first described in the literature in 1995. Distorted Constellations is an immersive, sensory, labyrinthine environment and playful experience of an augmented reality interpretation of artist, Nwando Ebizie's unique perception of the world. This exhibit draws on Visual Snow experienced as experienced by the artist and informed by interdisciplinary research, including cognitive science. The exhibition, public events and recent inbuilt psychological study, embrace the subjective nature of perception and highlight a role for augmented reality art experiences as cognitive science experiments in public settings. This contributed symposia will stimulate debate and questions arising across the intersections of art, neurology, cognitive science and public participation to leverage understanding of reality and the self through interdisciplinary considerations of cognitive difference. The role of reflexive collaborative inquiry and active public participation in emergent research is considered as a way to offer socially responsible scientific tools to the cognitive science community.

Many cultures share common constellations and common narratives about the stars in the night sky. Previous research has shown that this overlap in asterisms, minimal star groupings inside constellations, is clearly present across 22 distinct culture groups and can be explained in part by properties of individual stars (brightness) and properties of pairs of stars (proximity) (Kemp, Hamacher, Little and Cropper, 2022). The same work, however, found no evidence that properties of triples (angle) and quadruples (good continuation) predicted constellation formation. We developed a behavioural experiment to explore how individuals form constellations under conditions that reduce cultural learning. We found that participants independently selected and connected similar stars, and that their responses were predicted by two properties of triples (angle and even spacing) in addition to the properties of brightness and proximity supported by previous work. Our findings lend further evidence to the theory that commonality of constellations across cultures is not a result of shared human history but rather stems from shared human nature.