Arguably the most foundational principle in perception research is that our experience of the world goes beyond the retinal image; we perceive the distal environment itself, not the proximal stimulation it causes. Shape may be the paradigm case of such “unconscious inference”: When a coin is rotated in depth, we infer the circular object it truly is, discarding the perspectival ellipse projected on our eyes. But is this really the fate of such perspectival shapes? Or does a tilted coin retain an elliptical appearance even when we know it’s circular? This question has generated heated debate from Locke and Hume to the present; but whereas extant arguments rely primarily on introspection, this problem is also open to empirical test. If tilted coins bear a representational similarity to elliptical objects, then a circular coin should, when rotated, impair search for a distal ellipse. Here, nine experiments demonstrate that this is so, suggesting that perspectival shapes persist in the mind far longer than traditionally assumed. Subjects saw search arrays of three-dimensional “coins,” and simply had to locate a distally elliptical coin. Surprisingly, rotated circular coins slowed search for elliptical targets, even when subjects clearly knew the rotated coins were circular. This pattern arose with static and dynamic cues, couldn’t be explained by strategic responding or unfamiliarity, generalized across shape classes, and occurred even with sustained viewing. Finally, these effects extended beyond artificial displays to real-world objects viewed in naturalistic, full-cue conditions. We conclude that objects have a remarkably persistent dual character: their objective shape “out there,” and their perspectival shape “from here.”

可以说，感知研究中最基本的原则是我们对世界的体验超越了视网膜图像。我们感知的是远端环境本身，而不是它引起的近端刺激。形状可能是这种“无意识推理”的范例：当一枚硬币深度旋转时，我们推断出它真正是圆形的物体，丢弃投射在我们眼睛上的透视椭圆。但这真的是这种透视形状的命运吗？或者即使我们知道它是圆形的，倾斜的硬币是否仍然保持椭圆形的外观？这个问题引起了洛克和休谟的激烈争论，直到现在；但是，尽管现存的论点主要依赖于内省，但这个问题也可以接受实证检验。如果倾斜的硬币与椭圆形物体具有相似性，那么圆形硬币在旋转时应该 影响对远端椭圆的搜索。在这里，九个实验证明确实如此，这表明透视形状在头脑中的持续时间比传统假设的要长得多。受试者看到了 3 维“硬币”的搜索阵列，并且只需要定位一个远端的椭圆硬币。令人惊讶的是，旋转的圆形硬币会减慢对椭圆目标的搜索速度，即使受试者清楚地知道旋转的硬币是圆形的。这种模式是由静态和动态线索产生的，不能用战略反应或不熟悉来解释，在形状类别中普遍存在，即使在持续观看的情况下也会发生。最后，这些效果从人工显示扩展到在自然、完整提示条件下观看的真实世界物体。我们得出结论，物体具有非常持久的双重特征：它们的客观形状“在那里，