Visual perception of texture regularity: Conjoint measurements and a wavelet response-distribution model

Area of Science:

• Visual Perception
• Computational Neuroscience
• Image Analysis

Background:

• Texture regularity is a common visual feature, often studied by manipulating element position jitter.
• Previous research primarily focused on positional jitter's impact on regularity perception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate texture regularity encoding under complex conditions manipulating element spacing, size, and positional jitter.
• To determine how these factors interact to influence perceived regularity.
• To identify the underlying visual mechanisms for texture regularity perception.

Main Methods:

• Employed three-factor Maximum Likelihood Conjoint Measurement (MLCM) with human observers.
• Presented pairs of multi-element stimuli varying in element spacing, size, and positional jitter.
• Analyzed Gabor wavelet spatial filter responses and spatial frequency distribution moments.

Main Results:

• Element spacing, size, and jitter all significantly contribute to regularity perception.
• Jitter's effect on regularity is most pronounced with small element spacing and large element sizes.
• The visual system appears to use moments of the spatial frequency distribution across orientations, rather than just peakedness, for regularity judgments.

Conclusions:

• Perceived texture regularity depends on a complex interplay of element spacing, size, and positional jitter.
• Edge-to-edge distance between texture elements is a likely basis for regularity judgments.
• The variance of the spatial frequency distribution's skew across orientations serves as a potential neural readout for perceived texture regularity.