Filters Versus Textons in Human and Machine Texture Discrimination

Abstract A fundamental property of human visual perception is our ability to distinguish between textures. A concerted effort has been made to account for texture segregation in terms of linear spatial filter models and their nonlinear extensions. However, for certain texture pairs the ease of discrimination changes when the role of figure and ground are reversed. This asymmetry poses a problem for both linear and nonlinear models. We have isolated three properties of texture perception which account for this asymmetry in discrimination: subjective closure, perceptual distortion, and fill-in. These properties, which are also responsible for visual illusions, appear to be explainable by early visual processes alone. Our results force a reexamination of the process of human texture segregation and of some recent models that were introduced to explain it.

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