Independence of space-based and feature-based attention in the determination of figure direction

Abstract

Introduction Visual attention enhances our perception and even alters the perception of figures, as we often see in ambiguous figures. We investigated computationally the role of spatial attention in early vision for the perception of direction-offigure (DOF). Spatial attention alters local contrast gain in early vision, thus apparent local contrast will be modulated. If the local contrast is the basis for the determination of border-ownership (BO) that tells which side of a contour owns the border [1,2], BO will be modulated based on the local contrast that is altered by the attention. If the effect of attention is significant, the activity of BOselective cells will be facilitated/suppressed so that the DOF will be flipped.