title: On the surprising salience of curvature in grouping by proximity.
abstract: The authors conducted 3 experiments to explore the roles of curvature, density, and relative proximity in the perceptual organization of ambiguous dot patterns. To this end, they developed a new family of regular dot patterns that tend to be perceptually grouped into parallel contours, dot-sampled structured grids (DSGs). DSGs are similar to the dot lattices used to study grouping by proximity, except that only one of the potential organizations is rectilinear; the others are curvilinear. The authors used the method of M. Kubovy and J. Wagemans (1995) to study grouping by proximity in DSGs. They found that in the competition between the most likely organizations, one rectilinear and the other curvilinear, the latter is more salient. This phenomenon cannot be explained by contemporary accounts of grouping by proximity or contour integration.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia.
authors.forename: Lars
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Strother
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Virginia.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-8756-4399
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kubovy
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D004215:Distance Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009903:Optical Illusions; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010466:Perceptual Closure; D011601:Psychophysics; D012016:Reference Values