The animated glare effect: Another case of perceptual causality?

This works studies the phenomenal aspects of the animated glare effect (AGE), a compelling luminosity effect occurring in time. At a physical level, the illusion consists of luminance modulations of inducers I. Observers instead report to see brightness modulations of a central target T that cause the brightness modulations observed in I. In other words, the luminance transformations responsible for the phenomenal brightness modulations in T are experienced instead as effects caused by the brightness modulations of T. Spontaneous descriptions from observers lead us to hypothesize that AGE is a peculiar case of perceived causality. We discuss this hypothesis comparing AGE to classic mechanical causality effects, and report the results from a phenomenological experiment conducted to study the time course of AGE.