Shape Constancy

Shape Constancy is the tendency to perceive an object as having the same shape regardless of its orientation or the angle from which we view it. For example, when we look head-on at a rectangular picture frame hanging on the wall, it appears as a rectangle. If we walk off of to the side and look at the frame from an angle, we still recognize that it’s in the shape of a rectangle, but really, from that angle, the image processed by our retina is that of a trapezoid. Our brain compensates for the distortion of the shape by taking into account visual cues about distance and depth to keep our perception of the frame constant.