“Subjective appearance and objective discrimination of shapes in the periphery of the visual field"

We know a lot about the structure of the visual system, its physiology, and the visual pathways. On the other hand, there are still significant gaps in our understanding of "why things look the way they do" (as famously put by Koffka). A key point to understanding visual perception is studying the subjective (phenomenal) experience. Sometimes subjective experience and objective performance differ. Specifically, we have a uniform, rich and stable percept of the visual world which cannot match the limitations of the information our visual system can encode. There are models in the literature that try to explain our experience of the visual world. However, there are also exceptions that are not covered by these models. Three of these exceptions will be discussed, specifically regarding the interactions between central and peripheral vision in peripheral perception of shape. Foveal vision can aid, hinder or be independent from peripheral vision, demonstrating that peripheral vision cannot be considered just a low-resolution version of foveal vision, nor can it be seen as a separate system. The interactions instead illustrate a complex integration, where foveal and peripheral vision assume different yet complementary roles, shaping our visual representation of the world.