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When one wiggles a dark object with bright letters &c on it, the letters appear to move, floating in the plane. What is this optical illusion called?

Psychology & Neuroscience Asked on April 22, 2021

I stumbled upon this phenomenon in the 90s, when I was still a kid. I noticed that in the evening under indirect artificial lighting the red letters on a blue book cover (I think it was a Pink Panther book) seemed to wobble and dance around when you shook the book. At the time, none of the adults knew what it was called and many didn’t believe me and refused to look at the book.

Because of related interests I’ve revisited the issue and managed to recreate the phenomenon on my laptop. The effect is considerably more convincing when it’s done in the evening with the screen brightness turned down. As it turns out, the colour of the letters was irrelevant. To get an example of this effect, take any text, set the page colour to black and the text colour to some barely perceptible grey and put it on full screen (F11 in most applications). Now wait and give your eyes a moment, just until you can see the text clearly, and then shake the screen. The mouse cursor will appear to move in comparison to the text. For me it also works if I select one or two letters, in which case shaking the screen will appear to make the selected letters dance around with respect to the rest of the text.

I’m convinced at this point that it’s related to the Pulfrich effect in mechanism, but in this case no darkened glass is used and instead of depth motion, motion in the plane is created. Considering how easy it is to find, I assume it’s been described before and I’d like to read about it, but I don’t know what it’s called – hence my question.

Edit: I made a demonstration image; to be viewed in a dark environment with the monitor turned down so the background is just about visible.

Demonstration image

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