title: Context influence on the perception of figures as conditional upon perceptual organization strategies.
abstract: Two experiments tested the effect of context on figure perception. Subjects were shown rapid sequences of three figures: a prime, a whole, and a part. They were asked to decide if the third figure was a part of the second (Experiment 1) or if the second and third figures were the same or different with respect to a particular angle (Experiment 2). The prime served to establish a context for stimuli that followed to be compared. Priming had influence on the part-whole comparison in Experiment 1, but not on the local comparison in Experiment 2. The results of Experiment 1 were interpreted as evidence for a role of prior information in perceptual organization. Experiment 2 showed that the task must require an integrative perceptual organization strategy for the priming effects to occur.
authors.affiliation: University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: J F
authors.initials: JF
authors.lastname: Stins
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: van Leeuwen
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011340:Problem Solving; D011601:Psychophysics