Cognitive and temperamental determinants of orientation illusions

The database contains the results of a study that aimed to find the cognitive and temperamental predictors of susceptibility to orientation illusions on an example of Poggendorff and Zöllner figures. 161 participants aged 20–33. The database includes the results obtained by the respondents in the tasks: Visual Illusion Simulation, Embedded Figure Test, Attention Network Test, The Formal Characteristics of Behavior – Temperament Inventory.

With consideration of the current knowledge, we hypothesized that those who are more susceptible to orientation (Poggendorff and Zöllner) illusions are field-dependent people (H1). Susceptibility to these illusions is further dependent on weak efficiency of the alerting and orienting attentional networks (H2). We also propose two moderation models where temperament is a moderator of the relationship between susceptibility to orientation illusions and cognitive factors (H3): Model 1 – field-dependence/independence cognitive style; Model 2 – the efficiency of attentional networks.

The results showed that there is no one universal mechanism that explains susceptibility to the examined orientation illusions. We found that susceptibility to the Poggendorff illusion was related only to weak efficiency of the alerting network. Susceptibility to the Zöllner illusion was found to be related to both cognitive and temperamental predictors: a field-dependent cognitive style with a moderate or high level of Endurance, and an efficient orienting network with high level of Briskness.