Shape Recognition and Figure-Ground Organization

形状识别和图形背景组织

• 批准号: 9009100
• 负责人: Mary Peterson
• 金额: $ 19.78万
• 依托单位: University of Arizona
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 1990
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1990-12-15 至 1994-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9009100&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Shape; Recognition; Figure; Ground; Organization

Theoretical attempts to understand visual perception often partition perceptual processes into those processes that can be performed simultaneously and those that must be performed successively. Most theorists have assumed that figure-ground organization and shape recognition are performed successively. Figure-ground organization is the determination of which regions in the visual field represent figures and which constitute the backgrounds against which the figures are viewed. Figure and ground regions are separated by a contour; the region to which the contour is assigned appears to be the recognizable figure, whereas the other region appears to be an undifferentiated ground which simply appears to continue behind the figure. Despite the linkage between shape recognition and figure-ground organization, these theorists have argued that figure-ground organization must precede shape recognition, appealing either explicitly or implicitly to the argument that one cannot recognize a figure until there is a figure to be recognized. Consequently, figure-ground relationships are generally conceived to be determined by stimulus variables only (i.e., variables such as the relative areas, symmetries, convexities, and enclosure of the two regions on either side of a contour). Contrary to this argument, however, previous studies in Peterson's laboratory have shown that certain shape recognition analyses are conducted prior to the determination of figure and ground. These experiments can be readily integrated into current theoretical approaches to shape recognition, thereby rendering this argument obsolete. The planned experiments will examine the conditions under which shape recognition processes can contribute to figure-ground computations. One series of experiments will identify which specific types of contours (e.g., luminance contours, binocular disparity contours, and/or color contours) permit shape recognition computations to be performed simultaneously with the analysis of the stimulus variables relevant to figure-ground organization. Another series of experiments will test whether the shape representations corresponding to both interpretations of a reversible figure-ground stimulus are activated simultaneously prior to the assignment of the figure-ground contour. A third series of experiments will attempt to explicate the rules governing the interactions between shape recognition variables and stimulus variables in figure-ground computations. These experiments will provide information about fundamental aspects of visual processing, including the manner in which analyses of physical variables interact with cognitive variables in perceptual organization. These experiments are certain to be relevant to the design of surrogates for physical scenes.

理解视觉感知的理论尝试通常将感知过程分为可以同时进行的过程和必须连续进行的过程。大多数理论家认为图形-背景组织和形状识别是先后进行的。图-地组织是指确定视野中的哪些区域代表图形，哪些区域构成图形的背景。图形和地面区域由等高线分隔；指定等高线的区域似乎是可识别的图形，而另一个区域似乎是未区分的地面，只是在图形后面继续。尽管形状识别和图形-背景组织之间存在联系，但这些理论家认为，图形-背景组织必须先于形状识别，他们或明确或含蓄地诉诸于这样的论点，即只有在有图形可识别之前，人们才能识别出图形。因此，图底关系通常被认为仅由刺激变量决定（即，诸如轮廓两侧两个区域的相对面积、对称性、凸度和围合等变量）。然而，与这一论点相反，彼得森实验室先前的研究表明，在确定图形和背景之前，进行了某些形状识别分析。这些实验可以很容易地整合到当前的理论方法形状识别，从而使这个论点过时。计划中的实验将检验在何种条件下形状识别过程能够对图形-背景计算做出贡献。一系列实验将确定哪些特定类型的轮廓（例如，亮度轮廓、双眼视差轮廓和/或颜色轮廓）允许形状识别计算与与图-地组织相关的刺激变量分析同时进行。另一系列的实验将测试与可逆图形-背景刺激的两种解释相对应的形状表征是否在指定图形-背景轮廓之前同时被激活。第三个系列的实验将试图解释图形-地面计算中控制形状识别变量和刺激变量之间相互作用的规则。这些实验将提供关于视觉处理的基本方面的信息，包括物理变量的分析与感知组织中的认知变量相互作用的方式。这些实验肯定与物理场景的代理设计有关。