Kanizsa-type subjective contours do not guide attentional deployment in visual search but line termination contours do

Kanizsa-type subjective contours do not guide attentional deployment in visual search but line termination contours do.

We used visual search to explore whether attention could be guided by Kanizsa-type subjective contours and by subjective contours induced by line ends. Unlike in previous experiments, we compared search performance with subjective contours against performance with real, luminance contours, and we had observers search for orientations or shapes produced by subjective contours, rather than search...

Running head: SUBJECTIVE CONTOURS GUIDING ATTENTION (P544) Kanisza-style Subjective Contours Do Not Guide Attentional Deployment in Visual Search but Line-termination Contours Do

Object Affordances Potentiate Responses but Do Not Guide Attentional Prioritization

Handled objects automatically activate afforded responses. The current experiment examined whether objects that afford a response are also prioritized for attentional processing in visual search. Targets were pictures of coffee cups with handles oriented either to the right or the left. Subjects searched for a target, a right-handled vs. left-handled coffee cup, among a varying number of distra...

Induction of Kanizsa contours requires awareness

10 11 It BLOCKINremains BLOCKINunknown BLOCKINto BLOCKINwhat BLOCKINextent BLOCKINthe BLOCKINhuman BLOCKINvisual BLOCKINsystem BLOCKINinterprets BLOCKINinformation 12 about complex scenes without conscious analysis. Here we used visual masking 13 techniques BLOCKINto BLOCKINassess BLOCKINwhether BLOCKINillusory BLOCKINcontours BLOCKIN(Kanizsa BLOCKINshapes) BLOCKINare BLOCKINperceived BLOCKINwh...

Global image properties do not guide visual search.

While basic visual features such as color, motion, and orientation can guide attention, it is likely that additional features guide search for objects in real-world scenes. Recent work has shown that human observers efficiently extract global scene properties such as mean depth or navigability from a brief glance at a single scene (M. R. Greene & A. Oliva, 2009a, 2009b). Can human observers als...