Structural factors in figure perception

In this report, we examine tachistoscopic perception of lines in structured figures. Previous research has shown that perception of lines is facilitated when the lines occur as parts of coherent three-dimensional figures. Experiment 1 demonstrates that it is not necessary for the figure to be three-dimensional to obtain facilitation. Experiments 2 and 3 show that three-dimensionality is not sufficient either. What is important is that the target lines be structurally relevant to the figure. However, structural relevance of a target segment to the figure as perceived with unlimited viewing time is not perfectly correlated with perceptibility under tachistoscopic conditions; it appears that the targets which fall on the external contour of a figure may be facilitated even without a high degree of structural relevance. In view of this, we suggest a model in which perceivers use processing heuristics to direct processing to aspects of the input that are potentially important for determining the structure of the final figure, working primarily from the outside in.

[1]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Visual masking in multielement displays. , 1970, Journal of experimental psychology.

[2]  I. Biederman Perceiving Real-World Scenes , 1972, Science.

[3]  G. Keppel,et al.  Design and Analysis: A Researcher's Handbook , 1976 .

[4]  N Weisstein,et al.  Visual Detection of Line Segments: An Object-Superiority Effect , 1974, Science.

[5]  J. C. Johnston,et al.  Perception of Letters in Words: Seek Not and Ye Shall Find , 1974, Science.

[6]  G Wolford,et al.  Perturbation model for letter identification. , 1975, Psychological review.

[7]  David L. Waltz,et al.  Understanding Line drawings of Scenes with Shadows , 1975 .

[8]  William Prinzmetal,et al.  Configurational effects in visual information processing , 1976 .

[9]  Patrick Henry Winston,et al.  The psychology of computer vision , 1976, Pattern Recognit..

[10]  The role of pattern goodness in the reproduction of backward masked patterns. , 1976, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[11]  W. Estes,et al.  Serial position functions for letter identification at brief and extended exposure durations , 1976 .

[12]  B G Breitmeyer,et al.  Implications of sustained and transient channels for theories of visual pattern masking, saccadic suppression, and information processing. , 1976, Psychological review.

[13]  Lawrence C. Sager,et al.  Perception of wholes and of their component parts: some configural superiority effects. , 1977, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[14]  J. R. Pomerantz Pattern goodness and speed of encoding , 1977, Memory & cognition.

[15]  William Prinzmetal,et al.  Good continuation affects visual detection , 1977 .

[16]  D. Navon Forest before trees: The precedence of global features in visual perception , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[17]  Marcus Womersley,et al.  A contextual effect in feature detection with application of signal detection methodology , 1977 .

[18]  J. L. Mcclelland,et al.  Perception and masking of wholes and parts. , 1978, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[19]  N Weisstein,et al.  Line segments are perceived better in a coherent context than alone: An object-line effect in visual perception , 1978, Memory & cognition.