What are misperceptions of visual stimuli commonly referred to as?

Misperceptions of visual stimuli are best referred to as visual illusions. This term describes phenomena where the perception of a stimulus differs from the actual reality, often due to the way our brains interpret visual information. Visual illusions can arise from various factors, including context, color, and spatial relationships.

For example, an optical illusion such as the Müller-Lyer illusion leads people to perceive lines of equal length as being different because of the arrows at the ends. This highlights how our visual perception can be influenced by cognitive processes and environmental cues.

Other terms like visual disruptions, visual anomalies, and visual distortions may refer to different concepts or experiences related to vision, but they do not specifically capture the essence of how our perception can be tricked or mismatched from physical reality like visual illusions do. Understanding visual illusions is critical for studying perception, as they reveal insights about how our mind constructs our experience of the visual world.