title: Spatial competition on the master-saliency map.
abstract: The saliency map model (Itti and Koch, 2000) is a hierarchically structured computational model, simulating visual saliency processing. Iso-feature processing on feature maps and conspicuity maps precedes cross-dimensional signal processing on the master map, where the most salient location of the visual field is selected. This texture segmentation study focuses on a possible spatial structure on the master map. In four experiments the spatial distance between a texture irregularity in the stimulus ("target") and a cross-dimensional task irrelevant texture irregularity in the backward mask ("patch") was varied. The results show that the target-patch distance modulates target detection, and that this modulation is limited to critical distances around the target. We conclude that the signals from different feature dimensions compete on a spatial master map. There is first evidence that the critical distances increase with target eccentricity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Sport Science, Institute of Psychology, University Erlangen-Nuremberg Erlangen, Germany.
authors.forename: Ursula
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Schade
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Meinecke
keywords: critical distance; early vision; master map; non-classical receptive fields; retinal eccentricity; saliency map; texture segmentation