The role of the background: texture segregation and figure-ground segmentation.
The effects of a texture surround composed of line elements on a stimulus within which a target line element segregates, were studied. Detection and discrimination of the target when it had the same orientation as the surround were impaired at short presentation time; on the other hand, no effect was present when they were reciprocally orthogonal. These results are interpreted as background completion in texture segregation; a texture made up of similar elements is represented as a continuous surface with contour and contrast of an embedded element inhibited. This interpretation is further confirmed with a simple line protruding from an annulus. Generally, the results are taken as evidence that local features are prevented from segmenting when they are parts of a global entity.
Caputo
G
G
Insituto di Psicologia, Università di Pavia, Italy. gcaputo@circepsy.unipr.it
D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009433:Neural Inhibition / Q000502:physiology; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D011601:Psychophysics; D012399:Rotation; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D014794:Visual Fields