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Grounding the figure: surface attachment influences figure-ground organization
Shaun P Vecera1, Stephen E Palmer
1Department of Psychology, University of Iowa, E11 Seashore Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242-1407, USA. shaun-vecera@uiowa.edu
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
|January 5, 2007
Summary
The lower region effect in figure-ground organization extends to depth cues from vertical planes. This suggests visual perception is influenced by how objects attach to supporting surfaces.
Area of Science:
- Visual perception
- Ecological psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
Background:
- The lower region effect influences figure-ground organization, where the bottom part of a visual display is more likely perceived as figure.
- This effect is theorized to stem from ecological statistics of edges from objects attached to supporting surfaces.
Purpose of the Study:
- To test if the lower region effect generalizes to depth cues from vertical planes.
- To investigate the role of attachment to supporting surfaces in figure-ground organization.
Main Methods:
- Participants viewed ambiguous figure-ground displays with contextual inducers.
- Contextual inducers included receding vertical planes (walls) and control figures (uniform color or random texture).
- Depth perception was manipulated using linear perspective and texture gradients.
Main Results:
- A reliable bias was observed for the side attached to the receding depth plane to be seen as figure.
- No such bias was found in the control conditions lacking perceived depth.
- This supports the generalization of the lower region effect to depth-based cues.
Conclusions:
- The findings support the attachment hypothesis for figure-ground organization.
- Ecological biases in edge interpretation, related to objects on supporting surfaces, influence visual perception.
- The study links low-level visual processing to environmental regularities.
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