Shading and texture:Separate information channels with a common adaptation mechanism?

Abstract

We outline a scheme for the way in which early vision may handle information about shading (luminance modulation, LM) and texture (contrast modulation, CM). Previous work on the detection of gratings has found no sub-threshold summation, and no cross-adaptation, between LM and CM patterns. This strongly implied separate channels for the detection of LM and CM structure. However, we now report experiments in which adapting to LM (or CM) gratings creates tilt aftereffects of similar magnitude on both LM and CM test gratings, and reduces the perceived strength (modulation depth) of LM and CM gratings to a similar extent. This transfer of aftereffects between LM and CM might suggest a second stage of processing at which LM and CM information is integrated. The nature of this integration, however, is unclear and several simple predictions are not fulfilled. Firstly, one might expect the integration stage to lose identity information about whether the pattern was LM or CM. We show instead that the identity of barely detectable LM and CM patterns is not lost. Secondly, when LM and CM gratings are combined in-phase or out-of-phase we find no evidence for cancellation, nor for 'phase-blindness'. These results suggest that information about LM and CM is not pooled or merged - shading is not confused with texture variation. We suggest that LM and CM signals are carried by separate channels, but they share a common adaptation mechanism that accounts for the almost complete transfer of perceptual aftereffects.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/15685680260433913
Divisions: College of Health & Life Sciences > School of Optometry > Optometry
College of Health & Life Sciences
Additional Information: © VSP 2002
Uncontrolled Keywords: adaptation,contrast,detection,luminance,modulation,shading,texture,tilt aftereffect,vision,Biophysics,Psychology(all),Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Publication ISSN: 1568-5683
Last Modified: 26 Mar 2024 08:08
Date Deposited: 02 Mar 2011 12:21
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
http://booksand ... 685680260433913 (Publisher URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2003-03-10
Authors: Georgeson, Mark A. (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-8173-9522)
Schofield, Andrew (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-0589-4678)

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