Now listen to part of a lecture on this topic in a psychology class.

(Male Professor)
Let’s take an everyday example an ordinary round plate like you’d find in a kitchen. If you hold the plate directly in front of your face and look at it ,what shape do you see? A perfect circle, right?

Suppose you tilt the plate to a different angle, to a horizontal position, like you’re planning to put food on it, still a perfect circle? No! The circle is now stretched out, flattened into an oval . Do you conclude the plate had actually changed shape? Or that it’s a different object, not the same plate? Of course not! It looks different, but we perceive it as still being the same.

Here’s a different example. This classroom we’re in. It’s fairly large, right?

Now, from up close, from the front row, I appear to be relatively big, bigger than if you’re in the last row, right? But let’s say you’re sitting in the front row today but tomorrow you’re sitting in the back row. From back there I’m going to look smaller, but you don’t think I’ve actually gotten smaller. You don’t think you’re seeing a different professor, a guy who looks like me except he’s smaller. No matter where you are, up close or far away, you understand without even thinking about it, that I’m the same size, the same person.