What Is Alice in Wonderland Syndrome?
2. Misperception of Object Size and Distance
Dysmetropsia is the term for feeling that objects and people around you are a different size from normal. It is known as micropsia when things appear to grow smaller and macropsia when they grow larger. Children with AWS often perceive objects around their beds getting smaller. Many objects seen by Alice in Wonderland are the wrong size: doors, keys, animals, teardrops, etc.
Because the brain interprets smaller objects as being farther away, the misperception of size is often confounded with that of distance. For example, Alice exclaims, “’…now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!’ (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).” The feeling that things are closer to you than they really are is termed pelopsia, and feeling that they are farther away is teleopsia.
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