11
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      The Honeycomb illusion: Uniform textures not perceived as such

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          We present a series of patterns, in which texture is perceived differently at fixation in comparison to the periphery, such that a physically uniform stimulus yields a nonuniform percept. We call this the Honeycomb illusion, and we discuss it in relation to the similar Extinction illusion ( Ninio & Stevens, 2000). The effect remains strong despite multiple fixations, dynamic changes, and manipulations of the size of texture elements. We discuss the phenomenon in relation to how vision achieves a detailed and stable representation of the environment despite changes in retinal spatial resolution and dramatic changes across saccades. The Honeycomb illusion complements previous related observations in suggesting that this representation is not necessarily based on multiple fixations (i.e., memory) or on extrapolation from information available to central vision.

          Related collections

          Most cited references17

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Article: not found

          Familiarity and visual change detection.

          H Pashler (1988)
            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: found
            • Article: not found

            Compulsory averaging of crowded orientation signals in human vision.

            A shape can be more difficult to identify when other shapes are near it. For example, when several grating patches are viewed parafoveally, observers are unable to report the orientation of the central patch. This phenomenon, known as 'crowding,' has historically been confused with lateral masking, in which one stimulus attenuates signals generated by another stimulus. Here we show that despite their inability to report the orientation of an individual patch, observers can reliably estimate the average orientation, demonstrating that the local orientation signals are combined rather than lost. Our results imply that crowding is distinct from ordinary masking, and is perhaps related to texture perception. Under crowded conditions, the orientation signals in primary visual cortex are pooled before they reach consciousness.
              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: found
              • Article: not found

              The uncrowded window of object recognition.

              It is now emerging that vision is usually limited by object spacing rather than size. The visual system recognizes an object by detecting and then combining its features. 'Crowding' occurs when objects are too close together and features from several objects are combined into a jumbled percept. Here, we review the explosion of studies on crowding--in grating discrimination, letter and face recognition, visual search, selective attention, and reading--and find a universal principle, the Bouma law. The critical spacing required to prevent crowding is equal for all objects, although the effect is weaker between dissimilar objects. Furthermore, critical spacing at the cortex is independent of object position, and critical spacing at the visual field is proportional to object distance from fixation. The region where object spacing exceeds critical spacing is the 'uncrowded window'. Observers cannot recognize objects outside of this window and its size limits the speed of reading and search.
                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                Iperception
                Iperception
                IPE
                spipe
                i-Perception
                SAGE Publications (Sage UK: London, England )
                2041-6695
                25 July 2016
                Jul-Aug 2016
                : 7
                : 4
                : 2041669516660727
                Affiliations
                [1-2041669516660727]University of Liverpool, UK
                [2-2041669516660727]Brain Mind Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
                [3-2041669516660727]Università di Parma, Italy
                Author notes
                [*]Marco Bertamini, Department of Psychological Sciences, Eleanor Rathbone Building, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 7ZA, UK. Email: m.bertamini@ 123456liverpool.ac.uk
                Article
                10.1177_2041669516660727
                10.1177/2041669516660727
                5030753
                02abf749-e380-4034-b7a8-d26b4cc40431
                © The Author(s) 2016

                This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License ( http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

                History
                Categories
                Article
                Custom metadata
                July-August 2016

                Neurosciences
                texture,crowding,peripheral vision,suppression,honeycomb illusion,extinction illusion
                Neurosciences
                texture, crowding, peripheral vision, suppression, honeycomb illusion, extinction illusion

                Comments

                Comment on this article