Low-level features determine brightness in White's and Benary's illusions
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Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Integrating Visual Psychophysical Assays within a Y-Maze to Isolate the Role that Visual Features Play in Navigational Decisions
Published on: May 2, 2019
Viljami R Salmela1, Pentti I Laurinen
1Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 9, Siltavuorenpenger 20 D, 00014 Helsinki, Finland. viljami.salmela@helsinki.fi
Abstract:
We masked White's and Benary's brightness illusions and simultaneous contrast with narrowband visual noise and measured detection thresholds and brightness. The noise was either isotropic or orientation filtered. A narrow spatial frequency tuning was found for detection and brightness for every stimulus. A narrow orientation tuning was also found: the strength of the illusions decreased (White and Benary) or increased (White) depending on the orientation of the mask. The critical borders were always of the same contrast polarity. The results suggest that the brightness in figure-ground scenes is determined by mechanisms integrating incremental and decremental borders in early visual cortices.
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