Properties of long-range illusory contours produced by offset-arcs

Researchers have used several different types of illusory contours to investigate properties of human perception. One rarely used illusory contour is a combination of the abutting grating and Kanizsa illusions. We call this the offset-arcs illusion and provide an empirical investigation of the illusion. Through a series of four experiments, using different methods of measurement, we show that changes to the phase of the abutting-grating part of the inducing stimulus can dramatically change the perceived strength and clarity of the long-range illusory contour. The easy manipulation of illusion strength should make the offset-arcs illusion applicable to a wide range of studies that utilize long-range illusory contours. The lack of a brightness component to the illusion should allow the offset-arcs illusion to help separate perceptual grouping from surface brightness effects that are often confounded in other illusory contours.