title: The human visual system uses a global closure mechanism.
abstract: Research asserting that the visual system instantiates a global closure heuristic in contour integration has been challenged by an argument that behaviorally-detected closure enhancement could be accounted for by low-level local mechanisms driven by collinearity or "good continuation" interacting with proximity. The present study investigated this issue in three experiments. Exp. 1 compared the visibility of closed and open contours using circles and S-contours from low to moderately high angles of path curvature in a temporal alternative-forced choice task. Circles were more detectable than S-contours, an effect that increased with curvature. The closure enhancement observed can, however, be explained by the fact that circles contain more 'contiguity' than S-contours. Additional tests added discontinuities to otherwise closed paths to control for the effects of good continuation and closure independently. Exp. 2 compared the visibility of incomplete circles (C-contours) and S-contours derived from the full circles and S-contours in Exp. 1. Exp. 3a compared the visibility of arc pairs arranged in an enclosed position similar to "()" and a non-enclosed position similar to ")(". Results consistently showed enhanced visibility of contour configurations enclosing a region even after controlling for differences in contiguity and changes of curvature direction. A control test (Exp. 3b) demonstrated that the gap in the contours of Exp. 3a was too large to be bridged by local-level collinearity/proximity alone. The combination of good continuation and proximity alone does not explain the closure effects observed across these tests, as demonstrated through the application of a Bayesian model of collinearity and proximity (Geisler et al., 2001) to the stimuli in Exps. 3a and 3b. These results argue for the presence of a global closure-driven contour enhancing mechanism in human vision.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Binghamton University, State University of New York, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. gerhard@binghamton.edu.
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Gerhardstein
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tse
authors.forename: Kelly
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Dickerson
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hipp
authors.forename: Alecia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Moser
mesh_terms: D001499:Bayes Theorem; D005556:Form Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010466:Perceptual Closure / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods