A theory of preattentive texture discrimination based on first-order statistics of textons

The many indistinguishable texture pairs having identical second-, but different third- and higher-order statistics, led to the conjecture that globally the preattentive texture discrimination system cannot process statistical parameters of third- or higher-order. Thus in cases when iso-second-order textures yield discrimination this must be based on local conspicuous features called textons (Julesz, 1980). Here it is shown that globally even second-order statistical parameters, such as autocorrelation, cannot be processed by the textural system, and texture discrimination is solely the result of first-order statistics (density) of textons. It is also shown that the perceivable distance of statistical constraints (coherence distance) in densely packed stochastic textures is very short, four dots or less. As of now, only three texton classes were found: color, elongated blobs (line segments) of given width, orientation, and length, and the terminators (end-points) of these elongated blobs. The strength of these textons is demonstrated by several examples.