Abstract

The strength of preattentive texture segregation is strongly modulated by the density of micropatterns making up the texture. This spacing effect has been interpreted by Nothdurft [Vision Res. 25, 1957 (1985)] as evidence for the structure gradient as the primary predictor of segregation strength. If the texture involves a change in dominant orientation θ, the segregation performance should be monotonically related to Δθ/Δx. An alternative model suggests that the image be analyzed by a number of spatial filters varying in preferred orientation and spatial frequency, in which the spacing effect comes from poor SNR as a result of undersampling of the widely spaced patterns.

© 1988 Optical Society of America