Subjective Contours Research Articles

Visual saltation illusion induced by flashes of subjective contours.

The visual saltation illusion of a Kanizsa-type subjective triangle was demonstrated. After a subjective/real triangle was flashed twice at the same position, another subjective/real triangle was flashed at a displaced position. In a typical case, the second flash was perceived to occur midway between the first and third flash positions. This study showed that the rated illusion strength for the Kanizsa and real triangles largely depended on stimulus onset asynchrony and retinal eccentricity and that the illusion rating was the same between the Kanizsa and real gray triangles when they were presented on black disks (or inducers). When the real triangle was presented in isolation, the illusion rating was lower. Presenting flashes on disks appears to enhance the saltation illusion for both the Kanizsa and real triangles possibly due to a stronger crowding effect or shape changes of inducers enhancing the perception of object appearance and disappearance. Various types of saltation illusions with a Kanizsa triangle are demonstrated in a video.

Developmental changes in visual–cognitive and attentional functions in infancy

BackgroundIdentifying developmental changes in visual-cognitive and attentional functions during infancy may lead to early diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders such as ASD and ADHD. AimsTo clarify the developmental changes in visual–cognitive and attentional functions during infancy (3–36 months of age). Study designCross-sectional study. SubjectsWe included 23, 24, 31, and 26 participants aged 3, 9, 18, and 36 months, respectively (full-term births). Fifteen children who cried intensely or whose data could not be accurately recorded were excluded. Outcome measuresThree activities were given to each child while they were seated in front of a gaze-tracking device to evaluate re-gaze, motion transparency, and color–motion integration. We analyzed whether the child's attention shifted to the new stimulus in their peripheral vision in the re-gaze task. In the motion transparency and color–motion integration tasks, two images were presented simultaneously on the screen. In the motion transparency task, participants preferred random dots moving in opposite directions; in the color–motion task, they preferred subjective contours from apparent motion stimuli consisting of random red and green dots with different luminance. ResultsIn the re-gaze task, fewer 3-month-olds gazed at the new target than other age groups participants. All ages showed preference for target stimuli in the motion transparency task, but 3-month-olds showed significantly lower preference in the color–motion integration task. ConclusionThese tasks may be useful for measuring visual–cognitive and attentional functions in infants.

A new middle-class fraction with a distinct subjectivity: Tech workers and the transformation of the entrepreneurial self

With the rise of digital capitalism, a novel occupational segment has emerged: so-called ‘tech workers’. Members of this grouping render and encode the digital technologies that permeate contemporary social life. While there are many studies about highly precarious digital labourers, research on these digital professionals remains scarce. Based on 40 original interviews, the article explores the subjectivity of tech workers. Specifically, it asks whether understandings of middle-class employees as entrepreneurial selves with a holistic market orientation hold true for this grouping, or whether new cultures of subjectivation are emerging. The key finding from these interviews is that tech workers show contours of a post-neoliberal subjectivity. While the figure of the entrepreneurial self remains an alluring force, this study detected four transformative cultures of subjectivation: (1) a return of the critique of economic inequality; (2) a concern for diversity; (3) an ethic of mindfulness; and (4) a lifestyle that signals ordinariness. These distinct forms of subjectivity point to the formation of a new middle-class fraction. However, drawing on the sociology of critique, this article also considers how this transformation of subjectivity can be appropriated as yet another new spirit of capitalism.

New Routes to Mixed “Roots”

Developments in reproductive (e.g., assisted reproduction, surrogacy) and genetic technologies (commercial DNA ancestry testing) have opened new routes to mixedness that disrupt the relationship between multiracialism and family. Discussions of racial mixedness, both academic and lay, tend to refer to persons born to parents of different racialized ancestry. Multiracialism is also understood as an outcome of extended generational descent—a family lineage comprised of ancestors of varied “races”. Both modes of mixed subjectivity rely on a notion of race as transmitted through sexual reproduction, and our study of them has often focused on the implications of this boundary crossing for families. These routes to mixedness imply a degree of intimacy and “knownness” between partners, with implications for the broader web of relationships into which one is born or marries. Assisted reproduction allows for the intentional creation of mixed-race babies outside of sexual reproduction and relationship. These technologies make possible mixed race by design, in which one can choose an egg or sperm donor on the basis of their racial difference, without knowing the donor beyond a set of descriptive characteristics. Commercial DNA testing produces another route to mixedness—mixed by revelation—in which previously unknown mixed ancestry is revealed through genetic testing. Ancestry tests, however, deal in estimations of biogenetic markers, rather than specific persons. To varying degrees, these newer routes to mixedness reconfigure the nexus of biogenetic substance and kinship long foregrounded in American notions of mixedness, expand the contours of mixed-race subjectivity, and reshape notions of interracial relatedness.

Law’s Dark Clarity: Hugo and the ‘Misery’ of Legal Categorizations

Abstract Laws punish delinquents after having made them such, and yet this is not inevitable. At work in this phenomenon is a melding of ‘ought’ and ‘is’ in which the law renders criminal behavior perpetually determinative by recognizing only a duty to abide by statutes while simultaneously losing site of the magma of meanings and behaviors that constitute human lives. Using the core of Hugo’s epic Les Misérables as a kind of mirroring illustration, this paper will explore how categorical rigidity and blindness to the changing contours of identity and subjectivity constitute one dark side of the law. Hugo’s work demonstrates the importance of literature as a parallel narrative that can illuminate law’s limitations, specifically, its tendency to conceal through certainty, ignoring the actual possibilities of becoming for the subjects it is charged to rule and protect. I will argue that in Les Misérables we can see an inversion in the order of priority between narrative commitment and social criticism, specifically a meta-legal criticism that has specific insights regarding how law obfuscates the ought/is divide and, in so doing, loses legitimacy and collapses in on itself. Issues of human dignity, social responsibility and the very purpose and legitimacy of law can be constructively addressed through parallel analysis of Hugo’s world of ‘the wretched’ and those the law renders wretched even today.

Madness, virtue, and ecology: A classical Indian approach to psychiatric disturbance

The Caraka Saṃhitā (ca. first century BCE–third century CE), the first classical Indian medical compendium, covers a wide variety of pharmacological and therapeutic treatment, while also sketching out a philosophical anthropology of the human subject who is the patient of the physicians for whom this text was composed. In this article, I outline some of the relevant aspects of this anthropology – in particular, its understanding of ‘mind’ and other elements that constitute the subject – before exploring two ways in which it approaches ‘psychiatric’ disorder: one as ‘mental illness’ ( mānasa-roga), the other as ‘madness’ ( unmāda). I focus on two aspects of this approach. One concerns the moral relationship between the virtuous and the well life, or the moral and the medical dimensions of a patient’s subjectivity. The other is about the phenomenological relationship between the patient and the ecology within which the patient’s disturbance occurs. The aetiology of and responses to such disturbances helps us think more carefully about the very contours of subjectivity, about who we are and how we should understand ourselves. I locate this interpretation within a larger programme on the interpretation of the whole human being, which I have elsewhere called ‘ecological phenomenology’.

Saliency Contour Extraction Based on Multi-level Feature Channel Optimization Coding

<p>A biomimetic vision computing model based on multi-level feature channel optimization coding is proposed and applied to image contour detection, combining the end-to-end detection method of full convolutional neural network and the traditional contour detection method based on biological vision mechanism. Considering the effectiveness of the Gabor filter in perceiving the scale and direction of the image target, the Gabor filter is introduced to simulate the multi-level feature response on the visual path. The optimal scale and direction of the Gabor filter are obtained based on the similarity index, and they are used as the frequency separation parameter of the NSCT transform. The contour sub-image obtained by the NSCT transform is combined with the original image for feature enhancement and fusion to realize the primary contour response. The low-dimensional and low-redundancy primary contour response is used as the input sample of the network model to relieve network pressure and reduce computational complexity. A fully improved convolutional neural network model is constructed for multi-scale training, through feature encoder to feature decoder, to achieve end-to-end pixel prediction, and obtain a complete and continuous detection image of the subject contour. Using the BSDS500 atlas as the experimental sample, the average accuracy index is 0.85, which runs on the device CPU at a detection rate of 20+ FPS to achieve a good balance between training efficiency and detection effect.</p>

Spatio-temporal and -spectral feature maps in photoplethysmography imaging and infrared thermography

BackgroundOnly a small fraction of the information available is generally used in the majority of camera-based sensing approaches for vital sign monitoring. Dedicated skin pixels, for example, fall into this category while other regions are often disregarded early in the processing chain.MethodsWe look at a simple processing chain for imaging where a video stream is converted to several other streams to investigate whether other image regions should also be considered. These streams are generated by mapping spatio-temporal and -spectral features of video segments and, thus, compressing the information contained in several seconds of video and encoding these in a new image. Two typical scenarios are provided as examples to study the applicability of these maps: face videos in a laboratory setting and measurements of a baby in the neonatal intensive care unit. Each measurement consists of the synchronous recording of photoplethysmography imaging (PPGI) and infrared thermography (IRT). We report the results of a visual inspection of those maps, evaluate the root mean square (RMS) contrast of foreground and background regions, and use histogram intersections as a tool for similarity measurements.ResultsThe maps allow us to distinguish visually between pulsatile foreground objects and an image background, which is found to be a noisy pattern. Distortions in the maps could be localized and the origin could be discovered. The IRT highlights subject contours for the heart frequency band, while silhouettes show strong signals in PPGI. Reflections and shadows were found to be sources of signals and distortions. We can testify advantages for the use of near-infrared light for PPGI. Furthermore, a difference in RMS contrast for pulsatile and non-pulsatile regions could be demonstrated. Histogram intersections allowed us to differentiate between the background and foreground.ConclusionsWe introduced new maps for the two sensing modalities and presented an overview for three different wavelength ranges. The maps can be used as a tool for visualizing aspects of the dynamic information hidden in video streams without automation. We propose focusing on an indirect method to detect pulsatile regions by using the noisy background pattern characteristic, for example, based on the histogram approach introduced.

Skin as Ecstatic Surface: Listening to Queer Diaspora in the work of Patrick Cruz

Patrick Cruz is a Toronto-based painter whose artistic practice is informed by his experience of migrating from the Philippines to Canada. The Filipinx diaspora in Canada is large but often not given adequate attention in queer theories of nationhood. This article makes the argument that the textures or “skin” of Patrick Cruz’s canvases are an extension of his interior world and insist on the complex psychic, corporeal, and sonic contours of Filipinx migration and diasporic subjectivity in Canada. It proposes a queer theory of listening to suggest that Cruz’s paintings are important for their expression of Filipinx diaspora. Bringing sound studies to bear on notions of skin, surface, and queer affect, this article makes the case that when one listens closely to a painting a new intimacy with the work and the Filipinx artist is forged. Central to arguments made is scholarship produced in the fields of queer diaspora studies and Filipinx studies.

Illusory contour perception in domestic dogs

One way to better understand how animals visually perceive their environment is to assess the way in which visual information is interpreted and adapted based on preconceptions. Domestic dogs represent a unique species in which to evaluate visual perception as recent findings suggest they may differ from humans and other animal species in terms of their susceptibility to geometric visual illusions. Dogs have demonstrated human-like, reversed, and null susceptibility depending on the type of illusion. To further evaluate how dogs perceive their environment, it is necessary to perform additional assessments of visual perception. One such assessment is the perceptual filling-in of figures, which may be invoked when presented with illusory contours. Six dogs were assessed on their perception of the Ehrenstein illusory contour illusion in a two-choice size-discrimination task. Dogs, as a group, demonstrated equivocal perception of illusory contours. Some individual dogs, however, demonstrated human-like perception of the subjective contours, providing preliminary evidence that this species is capable of perceiving illusory contour illusions, thereby improving the current understanding of canine visual perception capabilities. Additional assessments using alternative illusory contour illusions are needed to clarify these results and identify features that underpin the individual differences observed.

Hole superiority effect with 3D figures formed by binocular disparity

The global-first theory of topological perception claims that topological perception is prior to the perception of local features (e.g., Chen, 1982, 2005). Our previous studies demonstrated a hole superiority effect (HSE): Figures with holes are more detectable than figures without holes. Such an HSE was shown with figures formed by either orientation-defined texture (Zhang, 2009) or a black-and-white contrast (Meng, Cui, Zhou, Chen, & Ma, 2012). The present study used binocular disparity as one more organizing factor for testing the abstract nature of the HSE, indicating holes, as a typical kind of topological invariance, are represented in vision independent of the features that were forming the holes. The disparity-forming figures were well controlled for luminance, spatial frequency, subjective contours, and other nontopological factors, which are commonly considered as counter explanations against the topological theory.

International Law and Corporate Participation in Times of Armed Conflict

This paper explores the overlapping conceptions of ‘international legal personhood’ in international criminal law (ICL) and international investment law (IIL) in light of the December 2016 ICSID Award of Urbaser v. Argentina. It is an effort to parse out and test potential standards for investor-to-state liability for corporate participation in mass atrocities and human rights violations, particularly in instances of armed conflict. In exploring the question of when a corporation can be held financially liable for human rights violations under international investment law, the paper suggests that Urbaser invites an application of ICL liability doctrines as ‘boundary crossing’ tools that arbitrators can use to further define the contours of international corporate subjectivity to international law.

Infants Perceive Three-Dimensional Subjective Contours.

The addition of crossed horizontal disparity enhances the clarity of illusory contours compared to pictorial illusory contours and illusory contours with uncrossed horizontal disparity. Two infant-controlled habituation-dishabituation experiments explored the presence of this effect in infants 5 months of age. Experiment 1 examined whether infants are able to distinguish between a Kanizsa figure with crossed horizontal disparity and a Kanizsa figure with uncrossed horizontal disparity. Experiment 2 tested infants for their ability to differentiate between a Kanizsa figure with crossed horizontal disparity and a two-dimensional Kanizsa figure. The results provided evidence that the participants perceived the two- and the three-dimensional illusory Kanizsa contour, the illusory effect in which was strengthened by the addition of crossed horizontal disparity.

First-Person Experiments: A Characterisation and Defence

While first-person methods are essential for a science of consciousness, it is controversial what form these methods should take and whether any such methods are reliable. I propose that first-person experiments are a reliable method for investigating conscious experience. I outline the history of these methods and describe their characteristics. In particular, a first-person experiment is an intervention on a subject’s experience in which independent variables are manipulated, extraneous variables are held fixed, and in which the subject makes a phenomenal judgement about the target experience of the investigation. I examine historical and contemporary examples of first-person experiments: Mariotte’s demonstration of the visual blind spot, Kanizsa’s subjective contours, the Tse Illusion, and investigations of the non-uniform resolution of the visual field. I discuss the role that phenomenal contrast plays in these methods, and how they overcome typical introspective errors. I argue that their intersubjective repeatability is an important factor in their scientific status, however, it is not the only factor. That they control for extraneous factors and confounds is another factor which sets them apart from pseudoscience (e.g., the perception of auras), and hence another reason for classifying them as genuine experiments. Furthermore, by systematically mapping out the structure of visual experience, these methods make scientific progress. Praises of such first-person experimental approaches may not always be sung by philosophers and psychologists, but they continue to flourish as respectable scientific methods nevertheless.

2-B-13 An illusory color spreading effect in a subjective contour figure with elliptic patches(Awarded Presentations at the 21st Annual Meeting)

2-B-13 An illusory color spreading effect in a subjective contour figure with elliptic patches(Awarded Presentations at the 21st Annual Meeting)

The Psychic Life of Neoliberalism: Mapping the Contours of Entrepreneurial Subjectivity

This article adds to contemporary analyses of neoliberalism by shedding light on its psychic life. Writers in the Foucauldian tradition have explored how subjectivities are reconstituted under neoliberalism, showing that the neoliberal self is an entrepreneurial subject. Yet, there has been little empirical research that explores entrepreneurial subjectivity and, more specifically, its psychic life. By drawing on over 60 in-depth interviews with individuals who may be entrepreneurial subjects par excellence, this article adds to our understanding of how neoliberalism is lived out. The article is divided into 10 sections, with each section exploring a distinct contour of entrepreneurial subjectivity. They show, for example, that competition is not only other-directed under neoliberalism, but also directed at the self, and that exclusionary processes lie at the heart of the constitution of entrepreneurial subjectivities. By providing a theoretically informed analysis of a wealth of empirical data, the article makes an original contribution to our understanding of the psychic life of neoliberalism.

Robust representation of shape in a Grey parrot (Psittacus erithacus)

A Grey parrot, Griffin (Psittacus erithacus), previously taught English labels for various colors and shapes with respect to three-dimensional (3D) stimuli, was tested on his ability to transfer to very different two-dimensional (2D) images consisting of modal and amodal completion stimuli. For modal completion (aka subjective contours), Kanizsa figures were constructed using black ‘pac-men’ to form regular polygons on colored paper. For amodal completion, portions of variously colored regular 2D polygons were occluded by black circles or other black figures. For each task, Griffin provided a vocal English shape label for five possible shapes designated by their vertices (one, two, three, four, six). His accuracy was high for both amodal completed figures, including probe stimuli (28/38 correct) and modally completed figures (29/38 correct), with chance=0.20. The modally completed case (i.e., Kanizsa subjective figures) is of particular importance as there are no shared image parts between training and testing stimuli. We draw several conclusions from these results. First, a surface level completion process is fully operative insofar as Griffin was able to correctly identify shapes that differed considerably from training images. Second, because parrots can generalize from shapes of real objects to drawings where original image contours were clearly absent, the data provide a compelling example of shape invariance, indicating that visual shapes are processed far beyond that of their image description. Third, parrots with a repertoire of multiple vocal responses can be rigorously tested for visual competencies, an option as yet to be tried in other experimental animals.

The Kanizsa triangle illusion in foraging ants

The Kanizsa triangle, wherein three Pac-Man configurations symmetrically face inwards, is a well-known illusion. By exposing foraging ants (Lasius niger) to Kanizsa-shaped honeydew solutions, we studied the origin of this illusion. More specifically, we examined whether foraging ants showed different movement reactions to local honeydew patterns formed by nestmates. This novel phenomenon could serve as an abstract model of the Kanizsa triangle illusion under the assumption that such an illusion could arise through the sum of each agent's limited global cognitions, because each agent could not perceive the entire subjective contours. Even a subjective consciousness consists of some parts which have no identical perception and could be an illusion. We succeeded in inducing foragers to move along the sides of a Kanizsa triangle when Pac-Man-shaped inducers were introduced. Furthermore, foragers appeared to form Y-shaped trajectories when dot-shaped or inverse Kanizsa inducers were used. Based on our findings, we propose an agent-based ant model that compares modelled behaviour with experimental phenomena. Our abstract model could be used to explain such cognitive phenomena for bottom-up processes, because ants cannot perceive the given subjective contours, instead simply move along the edges.

The role of early visual input in the development of contour interpolation: the case of subjective contours.

We tested the effect of early monocular and binocular deprivation of normal visual input on the development of contour interpolation. Patients deprived from birth by dense central cataracts in one or both eyes, and age-matched controls, discriminated between fat and thin shapes formed by either illusory or luminance-defined contours. Thresholds indicated the minimum amount of curvature (the fatness or thinness) required for discrimination of the illusory shape, providing a measure of the precision of interpolation. The results show that individuals deprived of visual input in one eye, but not those deprived in both eyes, later show deficits in perceptual interpolation. The deficits were shown mostly for weakly supported contours in which interpolation of contours between the inducers was over a large distance relative to the size of the inducers. Deficits shown for the unilateral but not for the bilateral patients point to the detrimental effect of unequal competition between the eyes for cortical connections on the later development of the mechanisms underlying contour interpolation.

‘A MAD age’: Heibon Punch, student protest, the media and consumer society in Cold War Japan

In the 1960s, Heibon Punch became one of the most popular weekly magazines in Japan. It was the first weekly magazine aimed at young men and I examine here a selection of articles from the late 1960s, a period of violent student protests and international uncertainty, to argue that the importance of Heibon Punch can be found in the creation of a commodified urban, male subjectivity. In the pages of Heibon Punch, the counter-cultures that were emerging along with the protest movements taking to the streets of the major cities, became firmly embedded within the ideological state promotion of a consumer culture. The government's explicit connection of national development to domestic consumption after the ANPO protests was tied to American military and economic power, and was simply one more assault on popular sovereignty. In the pages of Heibon Punch, the political nature of the social and economic transformations wrought by high-speed economic growth was effaced by the relentless consumerisation of individual subjectivity. I place the magazine, its editorial stance and mediatisation of subjectivity, within the broader emergence of an urban, middle-class culture of consumption that served to blur the contours of individual male subjectivity, and was, in many ways, a precursor of neo-liberal subjectivities that emerged full-blown both politically and economically in the 1970s and 1980s. By pressing its readers to decide for themselves how to negotiate the identities, ideas, and goods on offer in its pages, Heibon Punch shifted the focus of political subjectivity from the established social and political system to the core of the individual subject.