Abstract
What is the role of objects in shape perception? To investigate this question we studied judgments of connected two-dimensional line figures. Observers viewed two figures sequentially and made the same or different judgments. The comparisons were either between two whole objects or between a whole object and a part. These comparisons are referred to as whole and partial comparisons. A whole-comparison advantage was found; subjects were faster and more accurate on whole comparisons than on partial comparisons. This advantage occurred with several procedures and sets of stimuli. The whole advantage did not occur when the whole object was not completely connected. These findings provide evidence for the perceptual significance of objects. More specifically, they are compatible with the existence of a hierarchical representation of an object and its parts.
© 1990 Optical Society of America
PDF ArticleMore Like This
Corlene Ankrum and John Palmer
WJ3 OSA Annual Meeting (FIO) 1991
Alex Pentland
WA3 Image Understanding and Machine Vision (IUMV) 1989
Eli Peli, Robert B. Goldstein, George M. Young, and Lawrence E. Arend
WB1 Noninvasive Assessment of the Visual System (NAVS) 1990