Abstract
Amodal completion has various functional effects, including an apparent slimming effect achieved by clothes. Local and global completion factors have been examined in previous studies, which also apply to the apparent slimming effect. Exposed parts of the body constitute the local factor at the junction area, while the shape or cut of the clothes is concerned with the whole configuration. This study investigated which is more important, the local or whole factors, for amodal completion in relation to the apparent slimming effect using drawings as stimuli. In Experiment 1, we examined the effects of the length and cut of a skirt. The length of the skirt corresponds to the local factor of the body, that is, the legs, because the exposed parts of the legs depend on skirt length (assuming a person of consistent height). We found that skirts' cut influenced their effect more than their length did. Experiments 2 and 3 revealed that the vertical form of clothes affects slimming by hiding thicker parts of the body and highlighting thinner parts. A supplemental experiment using geometrical figures suggested that the apparent slimming effect of clothes might occur only in the human body configuration.
Highlights
Amodal completion (Kanizsa, 1955), or the perception of a whole object that is partially occluded by other objects, takes place everywhere in our daily life
If, in a black-and-white checkered pattern, a black square is hidden by a circle, we no longer see the black square under the circle but instead see a white cross whose central part is hidden by the circle (p. 172, Figure 4.14); in this case, the symmetry of the surrounding pattern does not affect the amodal form under the occluding circle, but the way the occluding object locally contacts for the occluded one strongly affects the form of the amodal part
The apparent slimming effect of clothes related to amodal completion was investigated; experiments revealed that the overall shape of the clothes was more important that than the local factors at the junction
Summary
Amodal completion (Kanizsa, 1955), or the perception of a whole object that is partially occluded by other objects, takes place everywhere in our daily life. That is, when the thin parts of the legs are visible and the thick parts are invisible, the legs look thin Morikawa explained that this effect was an example of the illusion of amodal perceptual completion (though he used rectangles as occluders, not clothes); he says, ‘‘When only the thin parts of the legs, such as knee and ankles, are visible, the entire legs appear thin’’ Morikawa’s (2017) explanation of the apparent slimming effect is the same: The width of the exposed legs connecting the rectangles determines the amodal width of the legs. In these explanations, the local T-junction is crucial
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