The role of contrast polarities in binocular luster: Low-level and high-level processes

The binocular fusion of two center-surround configurations, where one center is brighter, the other darker than the common surround, leads to a strong impression of luster in the central patch. Without reversed contrast polarities of the center patches, this impression is much weaker or even absent. However, we observed that in the latter case the perceived luster can be considerably enhanced by enclosing both centers with a thin ring of fixed luminance. Compared to the standard stimulus, this center-ring-surround configuration shows much less binocular rivalry and the luster has also a different, more glass-like material quality. In a psychophysical experiment, we examined how the magnitude of the lustrous response depends on the width of the ring, both in stimuli with reversed and consistent contrast polarities. It has been proposed that binocular luster results from a neuronal conflict between ON and OFF visual pathways. To test this hypothesis with respect to our data, we developed a simple model to estimate the amount of interocular conflict resulting from a given binocular stimulus pair and applied it to all stimuli used in the experiment. We found strong correlations between the interocular conflict measure and the strength of luster observed in the experiment, suggesting that a common low-level mechanism determines the magnitude of the lustrous response. Regarding the differences in the perceived material quality of the lustrous impressions, we discuss evidence indicating that high-level processes are involved that promote the visual system's interpretation of the ring-stimuli as a certain depth-segmented 3D scene.