Figure-ground assignment in pigeons: Evidence for a figural benefit

Visual prior entry for foreground figures

“…Consistent with previous findings in the literature (e.g., Lazareva et al, 2006;Nelson & Palmer, 2007), target discrimination was faster when targets appeared on a figure than when they appeared on a ground, indicating a processing preference for figures over grounds. Importantly, this same figural advantage did not appear for our ambiguous stimuli or for separated regions.…”

“…In addition to our demonstration of the temporal-perception advantages of figures, others have shown that visual targets appearing on figures are discriminated faster and more accurately than are those on grounds (Lazareva et al, 2006;Nelson & Palmer, 2007;Wong & Weisstein, 1982). Although these latter studies have reported an RT difference between targets on figures and those on grounds, the cause of this figural advantage is not known.…”

“…In Experiment 3, participants performed a targetdiscrimination task in which a single target appeared on a region and participants reported whether the target was an x or an o. Nelson and Palmer (2007) reported that such a discrimination task is sensitive to figure-ground assignment; their participants were faster to discriminate targets that appeared on figures than they were to discriminate those that appeared on grounds (see also Lazareva, Castro, Vecera, & Wasserman, 2006). If our displays produce a figure-ground assignment that is consistent with the results of Experiments 1 and 2, we would expect targets to be discriminated fastest on figures that are in figure-ground displays in which the regions share an edge and compete for edge assignment.…”

Familiar shapes attract attention in figure-ground displays

“…Quite independently, Lazareva, Castro, Vecera, and Wasserman (2006) recently reported a related finding in pigeons. When pigeons must report the location of a target spot as being either on the figure or on the ground, by a discriminative pecking response, they learned the task more quickly and performed it more rapidly when the spot was on the figure than when it was on the ground.…”

Cue Competition Affects Temporal Dynamics of Edge-assignment in Human Visual Cortex

“…This dissociation is especially important in light of recent results showing strong associations between edge-assignment and attention (Nelson & Palmer, 2007;Qiu, Sugihara, & von der Heydt, 2007;Lazareva, Castro, Vecera, & Wasserman, 2006) and questions about the adequacy of attentional controls in previous SSVEP studies by Appelbaum et al (2006Appelbaum et al ( , 2008 and Parkkonen et al (2008). In the figural shape discrimination condition of Appelbaum et al, the figural region was task-relevant and, therefore, clearly attended.…”