Occlusion phenomena raise two questions: (1) When will an occluding and a partly occluded object be seen, as opposed to several nonoverlapping objects? (2) What is seen behind the occluding object? Available theories give no satisfactory description of occlusion data. In our view, this situation is at least partially due to the fact that patterns used in occlusion studies are always regular, whereas it is almost unknown which regularities are actually perceived in occlusion patterns. We have therefore collected a complete set of data for a restricted domain of patterns with minimal regularity. Starting from these data, we have developed a model of the perceptual organization of this class of patterns and tested it in a second experiment. The model is a specification of the Gestalt law of good continuation. It assumes that there is a tendency to describe a pattern by the smallest possible number of contour elements and with the smallest possible changes of direction within and between necessary contour elements. The results fit in well with the predictions of the model. It is further demonstrated that the model also describes the preferred interpretations of many regular patterns, published in other studies.
The likelihood principle, originally formulated by Helmholtz, states that the preferred perceptual organization of a sensory pattern reflects the most likely object or event. This principle of perceptual organization is compared with the minimum principle, which has its origin in the Gestalt tradition. This principle states that we see the simplest possible interpretation of a pattern, given the constraints inherent to the perceptual system. We argue that, as far as perception of visual form is concerned, the likelihood criterion is untenable as a criterion on which the preference for one interpretation over another could be based. Our main argument is that the likelihood principle implicitly starts from interpretations of patterns, whereas it is supposed to explain the existence of those interpretations in the first place. In our view, the likelihood of an interpretation is merely one consequence of the simplicity of the interpretation.
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