Abstract
We present normative data for an expanded set of stimuli designed to investigate past experience effects on object detection. The stimuli are vertically-elongated “bipartite” displays comprising two equal-area regions meeting at an articulated central border. When the central border is assigned to one side, a shaped figure (i.e., an object) is detected on that side. Participants viewing brief masked exposures typically detect figures more often on the critical side of Intact displays where a common (“familiar”) object is depicted than on a matched critical side of Part-Rearranged (PR) displays comprising the same parts arranged in novel configurations. This pattern of results showed that past experience in the form of familiar configuration rather than familiar parts is a prior for figure assignment. Spurred by research implicating a network involving the perirhinal cortex of the medial temporal lobe in these familiar configuration effects, we enlarged the stimulus set from 24 to 48 base stimuli to increase its usefulness for behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging experiments. We measured the percentage of participants who agreed on a single interpretation for each side of Intact, Upright PR, and Inverted PR displays (144 displays; 288 sides) under long exposure conditions. High inter-subject agreement is taken to operationally define a familiar configuration. This new stimulus set is well-suited to investigate questions concerning how parts and wholes are integrated and how high- and low-level brain areas interact in object detection. This set also allows tests of predictions regarding cross-border competition in figure assignment and assessments of individual differences. The displays, their image statistics, and normative data are available online (https://osf.io/j9kz2/).
Highlights
A fundamental aspect of visual perception involves detecting where objects lie in a scene
The object category identified by the largest number of participants for a given side of the border of a given stimulus was selected as the best fitting interpretation
We found that finding complementary sides for which no participants agreed on an interpretation was nearly impossible
Summary
A fundamental aspect of visual perception involves detecting where objects lie in a scene. Normative data for OMEFA-II the other side, lacking a border, is perceived as a locally shapeless background to the figure (e.g., [1,2,3,4]). This outcome, commonly called figure-ground perception, is essentially object detection [5]. It has long been known that figure-ground perception (i.e., object detection) is influenced by properties associated with figures rather than backgrounds. It was long held that past experience could not affect figure assignment
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