Coding theory of visual pattern completion.

It is possible to construct a line drawing that represents one object partly hidden behind another, and most subjects complete the interrupted figure and see the hidden object as whole. This article is addressed to two problems: (a) What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for such figural completion to occur, and (b) exactly what will be seen behind the occluding figure---that is, what completion will be made? Leeuwenberg's coding model for line drawings was used to analyze a number of such figures, along with the hypothesis that figural completion occurs whenever it results in a simplification of final code of the whole figure. Data from previous experiments along with results from two new experimental studies were collected and shown to agree with this hypothesis. Of various possible figural completions or "mosaic" interpretations, subjects chose the ones resulting in the simplest overall code. However, the above conclusions are correct only if "simple" is precisely defined as the smallest information load in a completely reduced code. Other possible theories of figural completion, both structuralist and Gestalt, may invoke familiarity, particular "cues," like T-shaped intersections, simplicity of the hidden figure, symmetry, and good continuation. All such possibilities were considered in the experiments and shown to fail, wrongly predicting at least one figure. The coding-theory analysis, on the other hand, made correct predictions for all of the 25 figures used.

[1]  P. Ratoosh,et al.  On Interposition as a Cue for the Perception of Distance. , 1949, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[2]  A. Chapanis,et al.  Interposition as a Cue for the Perception of Relative Distance , 1953 .

[3]  J. Hochberg,et al.  A quantitative approach to figural "goodness". , 1953, Journal of experimental psychology.

[4]  H. Quastler.  Information theory in psychology , 1955 .

[5]  J. A. Leonard,et al.  Stimulus correlates of visual pattern recognition: a probability approach. , 1956, Journal of experimental psychology.

[6]  M. Wertheimer,et al.  Some determinants of phenomenal overlapping. , 1957, The American journal of psychology.

[7]  W. R. Garner.  Applications of Information Theory to Psychology , 1959 .

[8]  J HOCHBERG,et al.  The psychophysics of form: reversible-perspective drawings of spatial objects. , 1960, The American journal of psychology.

[9]  Klemmer Et,et al.  Perception of linear dot patterns. , 1963 .

[10]  H A SIMON,et al.  HUMAN ACQUISITION OF CONCEPTS FOR SEQUENTIAL PATTERNS. , 1963, Psychological review.

[11]  W. R. Garner,et al.  Response uncertainty and perceptual difficulty of auditory temporal patterns , 1966 .

[12]  Emanuel Leeuwenberg,et al.  Structural information of visual patterns: an efficient coding system in perception , 1967 .

[13]  Paul C. Vitz,et al.  A coded element model of the perceptual processing of sequential stimuli. , 1969 .

[14]  Frank Restle,et al.  Organization of Serial Pattern Learning , 1970 .

[15]  Herbert A. Simon,et al.  Complexity and the representation of patterned sequences of symbols. , 1972 .

[16]  Emanuel Leeuwenberg,et al.  CHAPTER 4 – Meaning of Perceptual Complexity , 1973 .

[17]  W. R. Garner.  The Processing of Information and Structure , 1974 .

[18]  W. R. Garner.  Uncertainty and structure as psychological concepts , 1975 .

[19]  I. Rock,et al.  An introduction to perception , 1975 .

[20]  J. Gibson.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1979 .

[21]  F. Restle.  Coding theory of the perception of motion configurations. , 1979, Psychological review.

[22]  I Rock,et al.  Induced movement based on subtraction of motion from the inducing object. , 1980, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[23]  Harrie F J M van Tuijl.  Perceptual interpretation of complex line patterns. , 1980 .