Abstract

A testpatch of visual texture has greater apparent contrast when it is surrounded by a uniform mean gray field than by a background of similar, high contrast texture. Temporally modulating the contrast of surrounding texture induces a substantial antiphase modulation of testpatch apparent contrast. Using a nulling procedure, we have found that this induced modulation of testpatch apparent contrast is (1) strictly monocular: there is no induced modulation of apparent contrast when the testpatch and surround are presented to opposite eyes; (2) spatial frequency specific: when testpatch and surround textures are filtered into nonoverlapping octave-wide spatial frequency bands, the modulation of surround contrast has little effect on testpatch apparent contrast; (3) orientation specific: when the testpatch and surround textures are of opposite orientation, the magnitude of induced contrast modulation may be much less than when they are of the same orientation.

© 1991 Optical Society of America