The effect of amodal completion on visual matching

Gerbino, Walter; Salmaso, Dario

doi:10.1016/0001-6918(87)90045-x

Cited by 83 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…These data suggest that occluded displays are well suited for evaluating the extent to which features are preferentially enhanced by an object-based mechanism that selects features from a single object and that this paradigm is a robust method for studying the representation of occluded items. That the participants perceived the occluded displays as phenomenally complete is consistent with the previous findings of Gerbino and Salmaso (1987 ;see also Sekuler and Palmer (1992) that an amodally completed figure, as in the case of our occluded displays, is functionally equivalent to a completed figure.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Object-based attention and occlusion: Evidence from normal participants and a computational model.

Behrmann¹,

Zemel²,

Mozer³

1998

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

174

203

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One way of perceptually organizing a complex visual scene is to attend selectively to information in a particular physical location. Another way of reducing the complexity in the input is to attend selectively to an individual object in the scene and to process its elements preferentially. This latter, object-based attention process was examined, and the predicted superiority for reporting features from 1 relative to 2 objects was replicated in a series of experiments. This object-based process was robust even under conditions of occlusion, although there were some boundary conditions on its operation. Finally, an account of the data is provided via simulations of the findings in a computational model. The claim is that object-based attention arises from a mechanism that groups together those features based on internal representations developed over perceptual experience and then preferentially gates these features for later, selective processing. Humans are exceptionally good at recognizing objects in natural visual scenes despite the fact that such scenes usually contain multiple, overlapping objects. One way in which individuals organize this complex input to minimize the processing load is to divide the field on the basis of spatial location and then to attend selectively to particular physical regions. This selective attentional spotlight "illuminates" areas of interest and facilitates preferential processing of information from those chosen areas (e.g., Broadbent, 1982 ;B. A. Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974 ;C. W. Eriksen & Yeh, 1985 ;Posner, 1980 ). There is now much evidence supporting this location-based selection, all of which shows that information from selected regions is processed faster and more accurately than equivalent information from unattended regions ( Posner, 1980 ;Posner, Snyder, & Davidson, 1980 ). The idea that location-based selection plays an exclusive role in organizing visual information, however, has been increasingly challenged in recent years. Studies have shown, for example, that humans can select one of two superimposed figures even when there is no spatial basis for selection ( Rock & Gutman, 1981 ) and can allocate attention to perceptual groups independent of the spatial proximity and contiguity of the component elements (e.g., Behrmann, Vecera, & McGoldrick, 1998 ;Driver & Baylis, 1989 ;Duncan, 1984 ;Kramer & Jacobson, 1991 ;Kramer & Watson, 1995 ;Lavie & Driver, 1996 ;Prinzmetal, 1981 ;Vecera & Farah, 1994 ). To account for these findings, an alternative selection process, in which attention is directed to objects, rather than to locations or unsegmented regions of space, has been proposed. This object-based mechanism, in which complex visual input is parsed into discrete units for further processing, has received considerable empirical, neuropsychological, and computational support in recent years. Object-Based Visual AttentionAn early but compelling empirical illustration of the view that attention can be directed to objects, rather than to spatial locations per se, comes...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

Object-based attention and occlusion: Evidence from normal participants and a computational model.

Behrmann¹,

Zemel²,

Mozer³

1998

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

174

203

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Yet, as Kellman and Shipley themselves note, occluded triangles are reported as triangles. In fact, the phenomenon that edges that are oriented at acute angles connect phenomenally behind an occluding object, forming an acute angle behind the occluder, has been reported time and again in the literature (Boselie, 1988;Boselie and Wouterlood, 1989;Gerbino and Salmaso, 1987;Kanizsa and Gerbino, 1982, Wouterlood and Boselie, in …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

A critical discussion of Kellman and Shipley's (1991) theory of occlusion phenomena

Boselie¹,

Wouterlood²

1992

Psychol. Res

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Kellman and Shipley (1991) recently advanced a new theory to explain the perception of partly occluded objects and illusory figures. The theory is a formalization of the Gestalt law of good continuation. In this paper we describe their account of occlusion when the contour of the occluder is completely specified by a display. Next, we outline some critical objections and present a number of counterexamples. Finally, we compare their theory with Wouterlood and Boselie's (in this issue) model of occlusion phenomena, which might also be considered as a formalization of the law of good continuation.

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“…In the following experiments this interdependency is tested by means of the simultaneous matching task (Gerbino & Salmaso, 1987).…”

Section: Question 1: Can the Preferred Completion Bementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We first review parts of the study by Gerbino and Salmaso (1987). Consider Gerbino and Salmaso (1987) concluded that amodally completed shapes are functionally equivalent to complete shapes.…”

Section: Simultaneous Matching Taskmentioning

confidence: 99%

Competing global and local completions in visual occlusion.

Lier¹,

Helm²,

Leeuwenberg³

1995

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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In visual occlusion 2 amodal-completion tendencies occur frequently. One tendency leads toward the simplest completed shape (a global completion) and the other to a shape for which the completion itself is as simple as possible (a local completion). Two experimental paradigms were used to test the strengths of these completion tendencies: a drawing task and a simultaneous matching task. The experimental results support the notion that the preference for either a global or a local completion is the consequence of a competition between interpretations. Finally, the authors discuss how the preference for a completion can be predicted by a model that is based on a quantification of both global and local aspects.

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The effect of amodal completion on visual matching

Cited by 83 publications

References 8 publications

Object-based attention and occlusion: Evidence from normal participants and a computational model.

Object-based attention and occlusion: Evidence from normal participants and a computational model.

A critical discussion of Kellman and Shipley's (1991) theory of occlusion phenomena

Competing global and local completions in visual occlusion.

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