Is the spiral effect psychological?

In 2017 a definition of spiral tilings was given, thereby answering a question posed by Gr\"unbaum and Shephard in the late 1970s. The author had the pleasure to discuss the topic via e-mail with Branko Gr\"unbaum in his 87th year. During this correspondence the question arose whether a spiral structure (given a certain definition of it) could be recognized automatically or whether "to some extent, at least, the spiral effect is psychological", as Gr\"unbaum and Shephard had conjectured in 1987 (see exercise section of chapter 9.5 in "Tilings and Patterns"). In this paper, an algorithm for automatic detection of such a tiling's spiral structure and its first implementation results will be discussed. Finally, the definitions for several types of spiral tilings are refined based on this investigation.
Comment: 14 pages, 11 figures, to appear in "Elemente der Mathematik" 2022