Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T22:49:11.006Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Illusory Form Perception and Perceptual Grouping Operations under Conditions of Restricted Visual Awareness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2018

Mikel Jimenez  and
Pedro R. Montoro
Mikel Jimenez*
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain)
Pedro R. Montoro
Affiliation:
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain)
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mikel Jimenez. Departamento de Psicología Básica I de la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. Calle Juan del Rosal 10, 28040 Madrid (Spain). Phone: +34–913986265. E-mail: mjimenez1142@alumno.uned.es
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the present study, we conducted two experiments (Experiment 1: 35 participants, M = 29; SD = 8.4; Experiment 2: 36 participants, M = 25; SD = 6.1) with the intention to explore whether underlying perceptual grouping operations and illusory form perception generate dissociable priming effects when Kanizsa-like figures are presented as primes and the rotated inducers as controls under conditions of restricted awareness. Using five different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA conditions, Experiment 1: 27, 40 and 53 ms; Experiment 2: 27, 80 and 227 ms), we displayed masked illusory and groping primes that could be congruent or incongruent in their orientation with subsequent probe stimuli (vertical vs. horizontal). We found significant priming effects in both Experiment 1 and 2 (p < .001, η2p = .31 and p = .016, η2p = .16, respectively), but, crucially, no significant priming differences between illusory and grouping primes across SOA conditions. Overall, our results are important in showing that a dissociation of the percept generated by the grouping of the inducers from that generated by the illusory form is crucial in the study of illusory form perception under conditions of restricted awareness. In addition, they provide further evidence of perceptual organization operations occurring under very restrictive awareness conditions.

Keywords

awarenessgroupingillusory formperceptual organizationpriming
Type
Research Article
Information
The Spanish Journal of Psychology , Volume 21 , 2018 , E42
Copyright
Copyright © Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bachmann, T., & Francis, G. (2013). Visual masking: Studying perception, attention, and consciousness. Oxford, UK: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Banica, T., & Schwarzkopf, D. S. (2016). Induction of Kanizsa contours requires awareness of the inducing context. PloS ONE, 11(8), e0161177. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161177CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ben-Av, M. B., & Sagi, D. (1995). Perceptual grouping by similarity and proximity: Experimental results can be predicted by intensity autocorrelations. Vision Research, 35, 853–866. https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(94)00173-JCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Behrmann, M., & Kimchi, R. (2003). What does visual agnosia tell us about perceptual organization and its relationship to object perception? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 29, 19–42. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.29.1.19Google ScholarPubMed
Breitmeyer, B., Ogmen, H., Ramon, J., & Chen, J. (2005). Unconscious and conscious priming by forms and their parts. Visual Cognition, 12(5), 720–736. https://doi.org/10.1080/13506280444000472CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Claessens, P. M., & Wagemans, J. (2005). Perceptual grouping in Gabor lattices: Proximity and alignment. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 67(8), 1446–1459. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193649CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eimer, M., & Schlaghecken, F. (2001). Response facilitation and inhibition in manual, vocal, and oculomotor performance: Evidence for a modality unspecific mechanism. Journal of Motor Behavior, 33, 16–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/00222890109601899CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fleiss, J. L., Levin, B., & Paik, M. C. (2013). Statistical methods for rates and proportions. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Harris, J., Schwarzkopf, D., Song, C., Bahrami, B., & Rees, G. (2011). Contextual illusions reveal the limit of unconscious visual processing. Psychological Science, 22(3), 399–405. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611399293CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jimenez, M., Montoro, P. R., & Luna, D. (2017). Global shape integration and illusory form perception in the absence of awareness. Consciousness and Cognition, 53, 31–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2017.05.004CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kanizsa, G. (1979). Organization in vision: Essays on gestalt perception. New York, NY: Praeger.Google Scholar
Kubovy, M., & van den Berg, M. (2008). The whole is equal to the sum of its parts: A probabilistic model of grouping by proximity and similarity in regular patterns. Psychological Review, 115(1), 131. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.115.1.131CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kurylo, D. D. (1997). Time course of perceptual grouping. Perception & Psychophysics, 59, 142–147. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03206856CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luna, D., Villalba-García, C., Montoro, P. R., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2016). Dominance dynamics of competition between intrinsic and extrinsic grouping cues. Acta Psychologica, 170, 146–154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2016.07.001CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Montoro, P. R., & Luna, D. (2015). Does the relative strength of grouping principles modulate the interactions between them? The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 18, e33. https://doi.org/10.1017/sjp.2015.33CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montoro, P. R., Luna, D., & Ortells, J. J. (2014). Subliminal Gestalt grouping: Evidence of perceptual grouping by proximity and similarity in absence of conscious perception. Consciousness and Cognition, 25, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.concog.2014.01.004CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Moors, P., Wagemans, J., van Ee, R., & de-Wit, L. (2016). No evidence for surface organization in Kanizsa configurations during continuous flash suppression. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78(3), 902–914. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-015-1043-xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Praamstra, P., & Seiss, E. (2005). The neurophysiology of response competition: Motor cortex activation and inhibition following subliminal response priming. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17, 483–493. https://doi.org/10.1162/0898929053279513CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Palmer, S. E. (1999). Vision science: Photons to phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Poscoliero, T., Marzi, C. A., & Girelli, M. (2013). Unconscious priming by illusory figures: The role of the salient region. Journal of Vision, 13(5), 27. https://doi.org/10.1167/13.5.27CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rashal, E., Yeshurun, Y., & Kimchi, R. (2017). The time course of the competition between grouping organizations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(3), 608. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000334Google ScholarPubMed
Reingold, E. M., & Merikle, P. M. (1988). Using direct and indirect measures to study perception without awareness. Perception & Psychophysics, 44, 563–575. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207490CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, R. I. (1981). Perception of an illusory contour as a function of processing time. Perception, 10, 107–115. https://doi.org/10.1068/p100107CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ringach, D. L., & Shapley, R. (1996). Spatial and temporal properties of illusory contours and amodal boundary completion. Vision Research, 36, 3037–3050. https://doi.org/10.1016/0042–6989(96)00062-4CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sasaki, Y. (2007). Processing local signals into global patterns. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 17(2), 132–139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2007.03.003CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schmidt, F., Haberkamp, A., & Schmidt, T. (2011). Dos and don’ts in response priming research. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 7(2), 120–131.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seghier, M. L., & Vuilleumier, P. (2006). Functional neuroimaging findings on the human perception of illusory contours. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 30, 595–612. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2005.11.002CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seydell-Greenwald, A., & Schmidt, T. (2012). Rapid activation of motor responses by illusory contours. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Human Perception and Performance, 38(5), 1168–1182. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028767CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spillmann, L., & Dresp, B. (1995). Phenomena of illusory form: Can we bridge the gap between levels of explanation? Perception, 24(11), 1333–1364. https://doi.org/10.1068/p241333CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stein, T., Hebart, M. N., & Sterzer, P. (2011). Breaking continuous flash suppression: A new measure of unconscious processing during interocular suppression. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 167. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00167CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sumner, P. (2007). Negative and positive masked-priming – implications for motor inhibition. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, 3(1), 317–326. https://doi.org/10.2478/v10053-008-0033-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vandenbroucke, A. R. E., Fahrenfort, J. J., Sligte, I. G., & Lamme, V. A. F. (2014). Seeing without knowing: Neural signatures of perceptual inference in the absence of report. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 26(5), 955–969. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00530CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vuilleumier, P., & Landis, T. (1998). Illusory contours and spatial neglect. Neuroreport, 9(11), 2481–2484. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001756-199808030-00010CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wang, L., Weng, X., & He, S. (2012). Perceptual grouping without awareness: Superiority of Kanizsa triangle in breaking interocular suppression. PloS One, 7(6), e40106. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040106CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed