Uniform connectedness and classical Gestalt principles of perceptual grouping.

We assessed whether uniform connectedness (UC; Palmer & Rock, 1994) operates prior to effects reflecting classical principles of grouping: proximity and similarity. In Experiments 1 and 2, reaction times to discriminate global letters (H vs. E), made up of small circles, were recorded. The small circles were respectively grouped by proximity, similarity of shapes, and by UC. The discrimination of stimuli grouped by similarity was slower than those grouped by proximity, and it was speeded up by the addition of UC. However, the discrimination of stimuli grouped by proximity was unaffected by connecting the local elements. In Experiment 3, similar results occurred in a task requiring discrimination of the orientation of grouped elements, except that the discrimination of stimuli grouped by UC was faster than that of those grouped by weak proximity. Experiment 4 further showed that subjects could respond to letters composed of discriminably separate local elements as fast as to those without separated local elements. The results suggest that grouping by similarity of shapes is perceived slower than grouping by UC, but grouping by proximity can be as fast and efficient as that by UC.     

Gestalt grouping effects in locating past events on timelines

Two experiments required human subjects to date events from the recent or historic past by placing them on timelines. Experiment 1 used parallel sets of timelines containing events similar or related to the test event marked either early or late on the timeline. For three of the seven test events used, subjects located the test event significantly earlier on the ‘early’ than the ‘late’ timeline. In experiment 2, where subjects were required to place a pair of related and a pair of unrelated events on a timeline, related events were significantly more bunched together than unrelated events. The results were interpreted as the consequence of Gestalt principles of perceptual organization.     

Subliminal Gestalt grouping: Evidence of perceptual grouping by proximity and similarity in absence of conscious perception

Previous studies making use of indirect processing measures have shown that perceptual grouping can occur outside the focus of attention. However, no previous study has examined the possibility of subliminal processing of perceptual grouping. The present work steps forward in the study of perceptual organization, reporting direct evidence of subliminal processing of Gestalt patterns. In two masked priming experiments, Gestalt patterns grouped by proximity or similarity that induced either a horizontal or vertical global orientation of the stimuli were presented as masked primes and followed by visible targets that could be congruent or incongruent with the orientation of the primes. The results showed a reliable priming effect in the complete absence of prime awareness for both proximity and similarity grouping principles. These findings suggest that a phenomenal report of the Gestalt pattern is not mandatory to observe an effect on the response based on the global properties of Gestalt stimuli.     

The role of Gestalt grouping principles in visual statistical learning

A major issue in visual scene recognition involves the extraction of recurring chunks from a sequence of complex scenes. Previous studies have suggested that this kind of learning is accomplished according to Bayesian principles that constrain the types of extracted chunks. Here we show that perceptual grouping cues are also incorporated in this Bayesian model, providing additional evidence for the possible span of chunks. Experiment 1 replicates previous results showing that observers can learn three-element chunks without learning smaller, two-element chunks embedded within them. Experiment 2 shows that the very same embedded chunks are learned if they are grouped by perceptual cues, suggesting that perceptual grouping cues play an important role in chunk extraction from complex scenes.     

Development of form similarity as a Gestalt grouping principle in infancy

Given evidence demonstrating that infants 3 months of age and younger can utilize the Gestalt principle of lightness similarity to group visually presented elements into organized percepts, four experiments using the familiarization/novelty-preference procedure were conducted to determine whether infants can also organize visual pattern information in accord with the Gestalt principle of form similarity. In Experiments 1 and 2, 6- to 7-month-olds, but not 3- to 4-month-olds, presented with generalization and discrimination tasks involving arrays of X and O elements responded as if they organized the elements into columns or rows based on form similarity. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the failure of the young infants to use form similarity was not due to insufficient processing time or the inability to discriminate between the individual X and O elements. The results suggest that different Gestalt principles may become functional over different time courses of development, and that not all principles are automatically deployed in the manner originally proposed by Gestalt theorists.     

Role of Gestalt grouping in selective attention: evidence from the Stroop task

Selective attention has been intensively studied using the Stroop task. Evidence suggests that Stroop interference in a color-naming task arises partly because of visual attention sharing between color and word: Removing the target color after 150 msec reduces interference (Neumann, 1986). Moreover, removing both the color and the word simultaneously reduces interference less than does removing the color only (La Heij, van der Heijden, & Plooij, 2001). These findings could also be attributed to Gestalt grouping principles, such as common fate. We report three experiments in which the role of Gestalt grouping was further investigated. Experiment I replicated the reduced interference, using words and color patches. In Experiment 2, the color patch was not removed but only repositioned (<2 degrees) after 100 msec, which also reduced interference. In Experiment 3, the distractor was repositioned while the target remained stationary, again reducing interference. These results indicate a role for Gestalt grouping in selective attention.     

Gestalt grouping effects on tactile information processing: when touching hands override spatial proximity

Using a tactile variant of the negative-priming paradigm, we analyzed the influence of Gestalt grouping on the ability of participants to ignore distracting tactile information. The distance between participants’ hands, to which the target and distractor stimuli were simultaneously delivered, was varied (near/touching hands vs. hands far apart). In addition, the influence of touching hands was controlled, as participants wore gloves and their hands were blocked from vision by a cover. The magnitude of the tactile negative-priming effect was modulated by the interaction between hand separation and whether or not gloves were worn. When the hands were touching, negative priming emerged only while wearing gloves that prevented direct skin-to-skin contact. In contrast, when the separation between the participants’ hands was larger, negative priming emerged only when gloves were not worn. This pattern of results is interpreted in terms of the competing influences of two interacting Gestalt principles—namely, connectedness and proximity—on the processing of tactile distractors.     

Perceptual grouping between successively presented stimuli and its relation to visual simultaneity and masking

Summary A 4×4 matrix of dots was presented by a tachistoscope. The first and the third columns of the stimulus pattern were presented first for 20 ms and then the second and the fourth columns were presented for 20 ms with SOAs of 0 to 170 ms. Luminous dots on a dark background, black dots on a white background, and black dots and small outline circles on a white background were used in Experiments I, II, and III, respectively. In each experiment, 5 Ss were asked to report whether the stimulus dots were seen as 4 horizontal rows or 4 vertical columns, and whether they were seen simultaneously or successively. The experimental results showed that the time range of successive grouping was nearly the same as that of perceptual simultaneity in Experiments I and II, but was much greater than the latter in Experiment III where the similarity factor favored successive grouping. Successive grouping generally occurred in the same time range with visual masking of dot patterns by random dots, temporal organization of patterns from successive stimulus elements. But the time range was generally wider than those of contrast reduction caused by temporal luminance summation, metacontrast, and apparent movement.A part of this study was conducted during the junior author's stay at Chiba University and presented by him at the 20th International Congress of Psychology at Tokyo, August 13–19, 1972 (Yamada and Oyama, 1972)     

多目标追踪中基于运动信息的分组效应

本研究旨在探讨运动信息对多目标追踪的影响, 具体为考察多目标追踪中是否存在基于运动信息的分组效应, 以及不同类型表面特征(颜色和形状)对这一效应的影响。实验1发现多目标追踪中存在基于运动信息的分组效应, 并且这一分组效应是自动化的。实验2和实验3分别在不同颜色和不同形状组合条件下考察了基于运动信息的分组效应的稳定性, 结果都表明不同表面特征的组合不会干扰基于运动信息的分组效应的形成, 但其效应量都因表面特征的出现而缩减。整体而言, 多目标追踪中存在基于运动信息的自动化分组效应, 并且这一效应是格式塔法则中共同命运律的具体表现, 能稳定存在于不同表面特征组合之间。     

The influence of adaptation and inhibition on the effects of onset asynchrony on auditory grouping

Onset asynchrony is an important cue for auditory scene analysis. For example, a harmonic of a vowel that begins before the other components contributes less to the perceived phonetic quality. This effect was thought primarily to involve high-level grouping processes, because the contribution can be partly restored by accompanying the leading portion of the harmonic (precursor) with a synchronous captor tone an octave higher, and hence too remote to influence adaptation of the auditory-nerve response to that harmonic. However, recent work suggests that this restoration effect arises instead from inhibitory interactions relatively early in central auditory processing. The experiments reported here have reevaluated the role of adaptation in grouping by onset asynchrony and explored further the inhibitory account of the restoration effect. Varying the frequency of the precursor in the range ± 10% relative to the vowel harmonic (Experiment 1), or introducing a silent interval from 0 to 320 ms between the precursor and the vowel (Experiment 2), both produce effects on vowel quality consistent with those predicted from peripheral adaptation or recovery from it. However, there were some listeners for whom even the smallest gap largely eliminated the effect of the precursor. Consistent with the inhibitory account of the restoration effect, a contralateral pure tone whose frequency is close to that of the precursor is highly effective at restoring the contribution of the asynchronous harmonic (Experiment 3). When the frequencies match, lateralization cues arising from binaural fusion of the precursor and contralateral tone may also contribute to this restoration.     

Comparison of the effect of onset asynchrony on auditory grouping in pitch matching and vowel identification

Previous experiments have shown that when a slightly mistuned harmonic of a complex tone starts more than about 80 msec before the remaining components, it makes a reduced contribution to the pitch of the complex. This contribution decreases to zero by about 300-msec onset asynchrony. In vowel perception, however, analogous experiments have shown that a much shorter asynchrony (around 40 msec) is enough to ensure that a component does not influence a vowel’s phonemic category. The three experiments reported here demonstrate that this difference in the utility of onset time as a grouping cue does not arise because of differences in stimulus structure, but rather is due to the perceptual task. They show that the onset asynchrony needed in a pitch-matching experiment to remove the contribution that a mistuned component makes to the pitch of a vowel is the same as that needed to remove the contribution to the pitch of a flat-spectrum complex tone. They further show that a much smaller onset asynchrony is needed to perceptually remove the same harmonic from a vowel for the calculation of vowel quality. The implication of this result for models of auditory grouping is discussed.     

Rhythmic masking release: effects of asynchrony, temporal overlap, harmonic relations, and source separation on cross-spectral grouping

The rhythm created by spacing a series of brief tones in a regular pattern can be disguised by interleaving identical distractors at irregular intervals. The disguised rhythm can be unmasked if the distractors are allocated to a separate stream from the rhythm by integration with temporally overlapping captors. Listeners identified which of 2 rhythms was presented, and the accuracy and rated clarity of their judgment was used to estimate the fusion of the distractors and captors. The extent of fusion depended primarily on onset asynchrony and degree of temporal overlap. Harmonic relations had some influence, but only an extreme difference in spatial location was effective (dichotic presentation). Both preattentive and attentionally driven processes governed performance.     

Gehirn und Gestalt

Brain and Gestalt II. Neuronal Mechanisms Summary. New results in the study of visual perception are presented from a psychophysical, neurophysiological and neuroinformatics viewpoint and discussed in relation to Gestalt psychological ideas. Four topics are emphasized: figure-ground segregation, perception of surfaces, motion perception, eye movements and attention. Zusammenfassung. Neue Ergebnisse in der Erforschung der visuellen Wahrnehmung werden aus psychophysischer, neurophysiologischer und neuroinformatischer Sicht dargestellt und ihre Bedeutung für gestaltpsychologische Ideen diskutiert. Vier Themenbereiche stehen im Vordergrund: Figur-Grund-Abhebung, Wahrnehmung von Flächen, Bewegungswahrnehmung, Augenbewegungen und Aufmerksamkeit.     

Perceived common rotary motion of ambiguous stimuli as a criterion of perceptual grouping

Apparent common behavior of contours with respect to a property for which each contour is ambiguous (in this case direction of rotary motion in depth) was used as a criterion of the unitary processing of the contours or “grouping.” Grouping was found to decrease as a monotonic function of the difference in line orientation and, for fixed orientations, to decrease as a monotonic function of line separation. These results are tentatively attributed to the distribution of line detectors in the projection area.