The roles of contour and luminance distribution in determining perceived centers within shapes

Two sources of visual information that likely could be employed by the perceptual system in locating the centers of bounded shapes—boundary configuration and luminance distribution—have been perfectly confounded in every study thus far aimed at investigating perceived centters. Observers, using either a revolving or stationary x-y plotter, made judgments on the location of centers within either revolving or stationary shapes of both uniform and varied luminance distributions. Results indicate that the location of perceived centers depended predominantly upon boundary contour and was affected by the distribution of luminance within these edges to a much lesser degree.