Texture density aftereffects in the perception of artificial and natural textures

Three experiments are reported concerning the texture density aftereffect. The experiments address the question of how visual texture density information is encoded by examining patterns of transfer between different textures. In the first two experiments, it is shown that manipulation of spatial frequency and orientation information does not affect the direction of the aftereffect of density (reduction in perceived density), though similarity between adaptation and test textures does influence aftereffect strength. The third experiment demonstrates that adaptation to density differences in artificial textures in which spatial frequency information is held constant produces density aftereffects in naturalistic test textures in which density and spatial frequency covary.