Abstract
Texton theory holds that visual texture segregation occurs through the preattentive detection of local differences in primitive visual units called “textons.” Three textons have been proposed for shape: lines, line terminators, and line intersections. The experiments reported here show that line closure also behaves like a texton under some conditions. In addition, the experiments show that texture segregation is not determined by texton differences per se, but by the extent to which the unique textons in a region are salient in the context of the textons common to regions. This suggests that preattentive vision is not as simple minded as texton theory claims it to be.
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This research was funded by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Enns, J. Seeing textons in context. Perception & Psychophysics 39, 143–147 (1986). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211496
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211496