Where is the light? Bayesian perceptual priors for lighting direction.
Perception of shaded three-dimensional figures is inherently ambiguous, but this ambiguity can be resolved if the brain assumes that figures are lit from a specific direction. Under the Bayesian framework, the visual system assigns a weighting to each possible direction, and these weightings define a prior probability distribution for light-source direction. Here, we describe a non-parametric maximum-likelihood estimation method for finding the prior distribution for lighting direction. Our results suggest that each observer has a distinct prior distribution, with non-zero values in all directions, but with a peak which indicates observers are biased to expect light to come from above left. The implications of these results for estimating general perceptual priors are discussed.
Stone
J V
JV
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TP, UK. j.v.stone@shef.ac.uk
Kerrigan
I S
IS
Porrill
J
J