Abstract
Past research has verified that observers assume that objects are reliably oriented with respect to a gravitationally centered coordinate system. Observers also appear to attend more to specific parts of objects, like faces, that typically are closer to the top. In the present work, we explored whether or not observers have a generic bias to view tops as being more salient than bottoms. In three experiments, observers indicated whether random shapes appeared to be more similar to comparison shapes that shared identical tops rather than bottoms. Observers exhibited a reliable tendency to match figures with similarly shaped tops. Matching choice was also a function of global shape attributes such as axis of elongation or size. The findings are consistent with the notion that, in nature, tops tend to be the most visible part and to provide the best information with respect to important aspects of objects such as animal intentionality and artifact functionality.
References
Antonovsky, H. F., &Ghent, L. (1964). Cross-cultural consistency of children’s preferences for the orientation of figures.American Journal of Psychology,77, 295–297.
Arnheim, R. (1954).Art and visual perception. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Attneave, F. (1955). Symmetry, information, and memory for patterns.American Journal of Psychology,68, 209–222.
Bruce, V. (1988).Recognising faces. Hove, U.K.: Erlbaum.
Clark, H. H. (1973). Space, time, semantics, and the child. In T. E. Moore (Ed.),Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 27–63). New York: Academic Press.
Clark, H. H., &Clark, E. V. (1977).Psychology and language: An introduction topsycholinguistics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Farrell, J., &Shepard, R. (1981). Shape, orientation, and apparent rotational motion.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,7, 477–486.
Franklin, N., &Tversky, B. (1990). Searching imagined environments.Journal of Experimental Psychology: General,119, 63–76.
Ghent, L. (1961). Form and its orientation: A child’s-eye view.American Journal of Psychology,74, 177–190.
Hayward, W. G. (1998). Effects of outline shape in object recognition.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,24, 427–440.
Jolicoeur, P., Ingleton, M., Bartram, L., &Booth, K. (1993). Topbottom and front-behind decisions on rotated objects.Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology,47, 657–677.
Kerpelman, L. C., &Pollack, R. H. (1964). Developmental changes in the location of form discrimination cues.Perceptual & Motor Skills,19, 375–382.
Lakoff, G., &Johnson, M. (1980).Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ot]Mamassian, P., & Landy, M. S. (1996, April).A prior for shape-from-contour. Paper presented at the annual meeting of The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, Fort Lauderdale, FL.
McBeath, M. K., Schiano, D. J., &Tversky, B. (1997). Three-dimensional bilateral symmetry bias in judgments of figural identity and orientation.Psychological Science,8, 217–223.
Morikawa, K., &McBeath, M. K. (1992). Lateral motion bias associated with reading direction.Vision Research,32, 1137–1141.
Poggio, T., Gamble, E., &Little, J. (1988). Parallel integration of vision modules.Science,242, 436–440.
Rittenhouse, D. (1780, March).Explanation of an optical deception. Paper presented to the American Philosophical Society.
Rock, I. (1973).Orientation and form. New York: Academic Press.
Schiano, D. J., McBeath, M. K., & Bruner, K. W. (1994, November).Orientation-constraining heuristics for interpreting figures as 3-D objects. Paper presented at the 35th Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis.
Schiano, D. J., McBeath, M. K., & Chambers, K. W. (1999).Random shapes are interpreted as silhouettes of bilaterally symmetric objects with tops on the axis. Manuscript in preparation.
Schiano, D. J., &Tversky, B. (1992). Structure and strategy in encoding simplified graphs.Memory & Cognition,20, 12–20.
Shepard, R. N., &Hurwitz, S. (1984). Upward direction, mental rotation, and discrimination of left and right turns in maps.Cognition,18, 161–193.
Terzopoulos, D., Witkin, A., &Kass, M. (1987). Symmetry-seeking models and 3D object reconstruction.International Journal of Computer Vision,1, 211–221.
Thompson, P. (1980). Margaret Thatcher: A new illusion.Perception,9, 483–484.
Tversky, B., &Schiano, D. J. (1989). Perceptual and conceptual factors in distortions in memory for graphs and maps.Journal of Ex-perimental Psychology: General,118, 387–398.
Winner, E., Dion, J., Rosenblatt, E., &Gardiner, H. (1987). Do lateral or vertical reversals affect balance in paintings?Visual Arts Research,13, 1–9.
Wolfe, J. M., &Bennett, S. C. (1997). Preattentive object files: Shapeless bundles of features.Vision Research,37, 25–43.
Yarbus, A. L. (1967).Eye movements and vision. New York: Plenum Press.
Yin, R. K. (1969). Looking at upside-down faces.Journal of Experimental Psychology,81, 141–145.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was supported by a grant from Interval Research Corp.
—Accepted by previous editor, Myron L. Braunstein
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Chambers, K.W., McBeath, M.K., Schiano, D.J. et al. Tops are more salient than bottoms. Perception & Psychophysics 61, 625–635 (1999). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205535
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03205535
Keywords
- Comparison Figure
- Stimulus Figure
- Random Shape
- Inverted Orientation
- Comparison Shape