The role of discontinuities in the perception of subjective figures

Recently we proposed a theory of visual interpolation (Kellman & Shipley, in press) that addresses a variety of unit formation phenomena, including the perception of partly occluded objects and subjective figures. A basic notion of the theory is that discontinuities in the first derivative of projected edges are the initiating conditions for interpolation of boundaries that are not physically specified. In this paper, we report four experiments in which this claim was tested in the domain of subjective figures. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that discontinuities in the first derivative of the edges of inducing elements have a clear effect on the frequency of report and the perceived clarity of simple subjective figures. Similar effects are found when unfamiliar subjective figures and inducing elements are used (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 rules out the possibility that the discontinuities in the first derivative merely add to the clarity of subjective figures. These experiments suggest that first-order discontinuities play a central role in unit formation.