Multiple completions primed by occlusion patterns

Contains fulltext : 28618.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access)There is a strong tendency to complete a partly occluded shape. Two types of pattern completion, global and local, are frequently reported. By means of the primed-matching paradigm, it has previously been shown that global completions are prevalent for stimuli in which regularity is abundantly present. In our study the primed-matching paradigm is applied to such stimuli in order to find out whether the rival local completion is generated as well. Therefore anomalous completions are added to the experimental design. Priming effects both on global and on local completions are compared with priming effects on those anomalous completions. The data indeed suggest that the occlusion patterns evoked not only a global but also a local completion

Structural Information Theory

Structural information theory is a coherent theory about the way the human visual system organises a raw visual stimulus into objects and object parts. To humans, a visual stimulus usually has one clear interpretation even though, in theory, any stimulus can be interpreted in numerous ways. To explain this, the theory focuses on the nature of perceptual interpretations rather than on underlying process mechanisms and adopts the simplicity principle which promotes efficiency of internal resources rather than the likelihood principle which promotes veridicality in the external world. This theoretically underpinned starting point gives rise to quantitative models and verifiable predictions for many visual phenomena, including amodal completion, subjective contours, transparency, brightness contrast, brightness assimilation and neon illusions. It also explains phenomena such as induced temporal order, temporal context effects and hierarchical dominance effects, and extends to evaluative pattern qualities such as distinctiveness, interestingness and beauty.</jats:p