title: The advantage of a ground surface in the representation of visual scenes.
abstract: The present study used change detection tasks to examine whether there is an advantage of a ground surface in representing visual scenes. In 6 experiments, a flicker paradigm (Experiments 1 through 4) or a one-shot paradigm (Experiments 5 and 6) was used to examine whether changes on a ground surface were easier to detect than changes on a ceiling surface. Overall, we found that: (1) there was an advantage in detecting changes on a ground surface or changes to objects on a ground surface; (2) this advantage was dependent on the presence of a coherent ground surface; (3) this advantage could propagate to objects connected to the ground surface through "nested" contact relations; (4) this advantage was mainly due to improved encoding rather than improved retrieval and comparison of the ground surface; and (5) this advantage was dependent on the presentation duration of the scene but not the number of objects presented in the scene. Together, these results suggest a unique role of the ground surface in organizing visual scenes.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA 92521, USA. bianz@ucr.edu
authors.forename: Zheng
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Bian
authors.forename: George J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Andersen
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003867:Depth Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D013028:Space Perception / Q000502:physiology*