Abstract
Texture arrays of line elements at various orientations were used to study three phenomena of preattentive vision. Subjects were asked (1) to discriminate texture areas and to distinguish their form (experiments on texture segmentation); (2) to detect salient or vertical line elements (experiments on pop-out); and (3) to identify configurations of similar or dissimilar targets (experiments on grouping). Within the patterns, line orientation was systematically varied to distinguish the effect of differences between areas from the effect of similarity within areas. In all of the experiments, performance was found to depend on local orientation contrast at texture borders rather than on the analysis of line orientation itself. Texture areas were correctly identified only when the orientation contrast at the border well exceeded the overall variation of line orientation in the pattern. Similarly, only target elements with high local orientation contrast were detected fast and “in parallel.” Targets with an orientation contrast lower than background variation required serial search. Preattentive grouping was found to depend on saliency, as defined by local orientation contrast, but not on the similarity of line elements. In addition to local orientation contrast, which played an important role in all of the visual phenomena studied, influences from the alignment of line elements with the outline of a figure were also seen.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
Bacon, W. F., &Egeth, H. E. (1991). Local processes in preattentive feature detection.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,17, 77–90.
Beck, J. (1966a). Effect of orientation and of shape similarity on perceptual grouping.Perception & Psychophysics,1, 300–302.
Beck, J. (1966b). Perceptual grouping produced by changes in orientation and shape.Science,154, 538–540.
Beck, J. (1967). Perceptual grouping produced by line figures.Perception & Psychophysics,2, 491–495.
Beck, J. (1972). Similarity grouping and peripheral discriminability under uncertainty.American Journal of Psychology,85, 1–19.
Beck, J. (1982). Textural segmentation. In J. Beck (Ed.),Organization and representation in perception (pp. 285–3 17). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Beck, J., Prazdny, K., &Rosenfeld, A. (1983). A theory of textural segmentation. In I. Beck, B. Hope, & A. Rosenfeld (Eds.),Human and machine vision (pp. 1–38). London: Academic Press.
Beck, J., Rosenfeld, A., &Ivry, R. (1989). Line segregation.Spatial Vision,4, 75–101.
Bergen, J. R., &Adelson, E. H. (1988). Early vision and texture perception.Nature,333, 363–364.
Duncan, J., &Humphreys, G. W. (1989). Visual search and stimulus similarity.Psychological Review,96, 433–458.
Foster, D. H., &Ward, P. A. (1991a). Asymmetries in oriented-line detection indicate two orthogonal filters in early vision.Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B,243, 75–81.
Foster, D. H., &Ward, P. A. (1991b). Horizontal-vertical filters in early vision predict anomalous line-orientation frequencies.Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B,243, 83–86.
Gilbert, C. D. (1985). Horizontal integration in the neocortex.Trends in Neuroscience,8, 160–165.
Gilbert, C. D., &Wiesel, T. N. (1981). Laminar specialization and intracortical connections in cat primary visual cortex. In F. O. Schmitt, F. G. Warden, G. Adelman, & S. G. Dennis (Eds.),The organization of the cerebral cortex (pp. 163–194), Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Gilbert, C. D., &Wiesel, T. N. (1989). Columnar specificity of intrinsic horizontal and corticocortical connections in cat visual cortex.Journal of Neuroscience,9, 2432–2442.
Gurnsey, R., &Browse, R. A. (1987). Micropattern properties and presentation conditions influencing visual texture discrimination.Perception & Psychophysics,41, 239–252.
Hallett, P. E., &Hofmann, M. I. (1991). Segregation of some mesh-derived textures evaluated by free viewing.Vision Research,31, 1701–1716.
Julesz, B. (1975). Experiments in the visual perception of texture.Scientific American,232(4), 34–43.
Julesz, B. (1984). A brief outline of the texton theory of human vision.Trends in Neuroscience,7, 41–45.
Julesz, B. (1986). Texton gradients: The texton theory revisited.Biological Cybernetics,54, 245–251.
Julesz, B., &Bergen, J. R. (1983). Textons, the fundamental elements in preattentive vision and perception of textures.Bell System Technical Journal,62, 1619–1645.
Knierim, J. J., &van Essen, D. C. (1992). Neuronal responses to static texture patterns in area Vi of the alert macaque monkey.Journal of Neurophysiology,67, 961–980.
Link, N., &Zucker, S. W. (1987). Sensitivity to corners in flow patterns.Spatial Vision,2, 233–244.
Mitchinson, G., &Crick, F. (1982). Long axons within the striate cortex: Their distribution, orientation and patterns of connection.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America,79, 3661–3665.
Moraglia, G. (1989). Display organization and the detection of horizontal line segments.Perception & Psychophysics,45, 265–272.
Nothdurft, H. C. (1985a). Orientation sensitivity and texture segmentation in patterns with different line orientation.Vision Research,25, 551–560.
Nothdurft, H. C. (1985b). Sensitivity for structure gradient in texture discrimination tasks.Vision Research,25, 1957–1968.
Nothdurft, H. C. (1990). Texton segregation by associated differences in global and local luminance distribution.Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Series B,239, 295–320.
Nothdurft, H. C. (1991a). Different effects from spatial frequency masking in texture segregation and texton detection tasks.Vision Research,31, 299–320.
Nothdurft, H. C. (1991b). The role of local contrast in pop-out of orientation, motion and color.Investigative Opththalmology & Visual Science,32, 714.
Nothdurft, H. C. (1991c). Texture segmentation and pop-out from orientation contrast.Vision Research,31, 1073–1078.
Northdurft, H. C. (in press). Fast detection of targets.Perception.
Olson, R. K., &Attneave, F. (1970). What variables produce similarity grouping?American Journal of Psychology,83, 1–21
Or, Y. H., &Zucker, S. W. (1989). Texture fields and texture flows: Sensitivity to differences.Spatial Vision,4, 131–139.
Parlitz, D., &Nothdurft, H. C. (1990). Does pop-out of orientation or motion produce express saccades? In N. Elsner & G. Roth (Eds.),Brain, perception, cognition (p. 258). Stuttgart: Thieme Verlag.
Sagi, D., &Julesz, B. (1985). “Where” and “what” in vision.Science,228, 1217–1219.
Sagi, D., &Julesz, B. (1987). Short-range limitations on detection of feature differences.Spatial Vision,2, 39–49.
Treisman, A. (1985). Preattentive processing in vision.Computer Vision, Graphics. & Image Processing,31, 156–177.
Treisman, A. (1986). Features and objects in visual processing.Scientific American,255(11), 106–115.
Treisman, A. (1988). Features and objects: The fourteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture.Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.40A, 201–237.
Treisman, A., &Gormican, S. (1988). Feature analysis in early vision: Evidence from search asymmetries.Psychological Review,95, 15–48.
Van Essen, D. C., Deyoe, E. A., Olavarria, J., Knierim, J., Fox, J., Sagi, D., &Julesz, B. (1989). Neural responses to static and moving texture patterns in visual cortex of the Macaque monkey. In D. M. K. Lam & C. D. Gilbert (Eds.),Neural mechanisms of visual perception (pp. 137–154). Woodlands, TX: Portfolio Publishing.
Von Tier Heydt, R., Peterhans, E., &Baumgartner, G. (1984). Illusory contours and cortical neuron responses.Science,224, 1260–1262.
Wertheimer, M. (1923). Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt: II.Psychologische Forschung,4, 301–350.
Wolfe, J. M., Friedman-Hill, S. R., Stewart, M. I., &O’Connell, K. M. (1992). The role of categorization in visual search for orientation.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance,18, 34–49.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nothdurft, HC. Feature analysis and the role of similarity in preattentive vision. Perception & Psychophysics 52, 355–375 (1992). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206697
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206697