Affiliation:
1. Department of Psychology, Middlesex University, Queensway, Enfield EN3 4SF, Middlesex, UK
Abstract
The Gollin test (measuring recognition thresholds for fragmented line drawings of everyday objects and animals) has traditionally been regarded as a test of incomplete figure perception or ‘closure’, though there is a debate about how such closure is achieved. Here, figural incompleteness is considered to be the result of masking, such that absence of contour elements of a fragmented figure is the result of the influence of an ‘invisible’ mask. It is as though the figure is partly obscured by a mask having parameters identical to those of the background. This mask is ‘invisible’ only consciously, but for the early stages of visual processing it is real and has properties of multiplicative noise. Incomplete Gollin figures were modeled as the figure covered by the mask with randomly distributed transparent and opaque patches. We adjusted the statistical characteristics of the contour image and empty noise patches and processed those using spatial and spatial-frequency measures. Across 73 figures, despite inter-subject variability, mean recognition threshold was always approximately 15% of total contour in naive observers. Recognition worsened with increasing spectral similarity between the figure and the ‘invisible’ mask. Near threshold, the spectrum of the fragmented image was equally similar to that of the ‘invisible’ mask and complete image. The correlation between spectral parameters of figures at threshold and complete figures was greatest for figures that were most easily recognised. Across test sessions, thresholds reduced when either figure or mask parameters were familiar. We argue that recognition thresholds for Gollin stimuli in part reflect the extraction of signal from noise.
Subject
Artificial Intelligence,Sensory Systems,Experimental and Cognitive Psychology,Ophthalmology
Cited by
10 articles.
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1. Gollin Figures;Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology;2018
2. Gollin Figures;Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology;2017
3. Recognizing fragmented images and the appearance of “insight”;Journal of Optical Technology;2015-10-01
4. Experimental study of invariant perception of wavelet images;Journal of Optical Technology;2011-12-01
5. Gollin Figures;Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology;2011