Abstract
This study was designed to assess the effects of organization, luminance contrast, sector angle, and orientation on a new, highly ambiguous Cs-keyhole figure. Organization and contrast were the most important factors, and sector angle also influenced figure-ground relationships. There was no significant effect of orientation, nor was there any significant interaction between any of the factors. Several new measures of figure-ground organization were developed, such as ambiguity ratios based on reaction times and on ratings of the strength of perceived organizations, providing new quantitative measures of figure-ground relationships. Distances measured across figural regions appeared smaller than equal distances across the ground in the new reversible figure, and also in Rubin’s classic vase-face figure presented in real and subjective contours. Inducing a perceptual set to see a particular organization in a reversible figure influenced the apparent distance across that organization. Several possible explanations of the observed effects are considered: (1) an instance of Emmert’s law, based on the difference in apparent depth of figure and ground; (2) an aspect of the Müller-Lyer illusion; (3) a feature-detector model of contour attraction; (4) a natural set or predisposition to see a figure as smaller; and (5) framing effects. The first two explanations appear the most promising.
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This paper is based on Matthew D. Shank’s dissertation, which was supervised by James T. Walker. The dissertation was submitted to the University of Missouri-St. Louis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the PhD.
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Shank, M.D., Walker, J.T. Figure-ground organization in real and subjective contours: A new ambiguous figure, some novel measures of ambiguity, and apparent distance across regions of figure and ground. Perception & Psychophysics 46, 127–138 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204972
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03204972