Visual binding of luminance, motion and disparity edges

Abstract

Visual binding of edge segments embedded in noise and created by luminance, motion and disparity contrasts were studied in three experiments. The results showed that path formation was limited by the same rules across all attributes tested. The first experiment showed that binding could be accomplished with either attribute used in isolation. The second experiment showed that closed paths were easier to detect than open paths irrespectively of the attributes used to create the path elements. No additive effects were found in either Experiment 1 or 2 when the path elements were created with several attributes superimposed on the same positions, compared to when only one attribute was used along the path. In Experiment 3 it was found that when another attribute was added between the positions of the first attribute along the path, so that two attributes alternated along the path, the performance of path detection was better than expected by probability summation estimated from the single attribute conditions. These results provide evidence for attribute-invariant Gestalt laws and provide clues about the underlying neural mechanisms.