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ISSN : 1226-9654

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Vol.29 No.1

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Perception of a surface split induced by globally inconsistent kinetic occlusion: Objects composed of salient parts break apart easily

The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology / The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, (P)1226-9654; (E)2733-466X
2017, v.29 no.1, pp.97-104
https://doi.org/10.22172/cogbio.2017.29.1.007

(2017). Perception of a surface split induced by globally inconsistent kinetic occlusion: Objects composed of salient parts break apart easily. The Korean Journal of Cognitive and Biological Psychology, 29(1), 97-104, https://doi.org/10.22172/cogbio.2017.29.1.007

Abstract

Many theories of shape perception assume that objects are the perceptual units, but complex objects are composed of distinct parts and thus the visual system can also represent object shapes at the level of smaller parts. The minima rule proposes that the visual system uses negative minima of curvature to define boundaries between parts. We employed a new experimental paradigm, globally inconsistent kinetic occlusion, to test whether the minima rule reliably mirrors regularities in the physical world, where concave contour segments often correspond to part boundaries. Participants observed animations of a target object moving across another static object, where the top half of the target was occluding, and simultaneously the bottom half occluded by the static object. This situation generated two competing perceptual interpretations: either the target cleaving the static object into two separated in depth, or the target being cleaved into two surfaces by the static one. We manipulated the sign and magnitude of contour curvature between the top and bottom halves of an object, so that 6 shapes were employed as moving targets. This result showed that targets with concave minima were more likely perceived as splitting into two surfaces than those with convex maxima or zero curvature. This finding suggests that the visual system parses shapes into parts, taking advantage of negative minima of curvature, and that part structure affects surface representations in accordance with ecological/physical regularities of the visual world.

keywords
part, negative minima, part salience, inconsistent kinetic occlusion, 부분, 오목한 극점, 부분 현저성, 비일관적 운동중첩

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