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F Boselie

Publications and source records attributed to F Boselie.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

A good-continuation model of some occlusion phenomena.

Occlusion phenomena raise two questions: (1) When will an occluding and a partly occluded object be seen, as opposed to several nonoverlapping objects? (2) What is seen behind the occluding object? Available theories give no satisfactory description of occlusion data. In our view, this situation is at least partially due to the fact that patterns used in occlusion studies are always regular, whereas it is almost unknown which regularities are actually perceived in occlusion patterns. We have therefore collected a complete set of data for a restricted domain of patterns with minimal regularity. Starting from these data, we have developed a model of the perceptual organization of this class of patterns and tested it in a second experiment. The model is a specification of the Gestalt law of good continuation. It assumes that there is a tendency to describe a pattern by the smallest possible number of contour elements and with the smallest possible changes of direction within and between necessary contour elements. The results fit in well with the predictions of the model. It is further demonstrated that the model also describes the preferred interpretations of many regular patterns, published in other studies.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

A critical discussion of Kellman and Shipley's (1991) theory of occlusion phenomena.

Kellman and Shipley (1991) recently advanced a new theory to explain the perception of partly occluded objects and illusory figures. The theory is a formalization of the Gestalt law of good continuation. In this paper we describe their account of occlusion when the contour of the occluder is completely specified by a display. Next, we outline some critical objections and present a number of counterexamples. Finally, we compare their theory with Wouterlood and Boselie's (in this issue) model of occlusion phenomena, which might also be considered as a formalization of the law of good continuation.

Form Perception↗
PubMed1989

The minimum principle and visual pattern completion.

The minimum principle states that a perceiver will see the simplest possible interpretation of a pattern. Some theorists of human perception take this principle as a core-explanatory concept. Others hold the view that a perceptual minimum principle is untenable. In two recent extensive surveys of the relevant literature a more differentiated position is taken: the minimum principle is not renounced in a definite way. In the research reported here, an intuitively appealing specification of a minimum principle is tested. An experiment on visual pattern completion was performed in which patterns were presented to subjects who traced the contours of the shapes they saw. It was predicted that there would be a preference for interpretations that describe a pattern as a set of separate shapes with minimal information load as computed by Leeuwenberg's coding language. However, only half of the responses given by the subjects were predicted by this specification of a minimum principle. It was further demonstrated that locally complex interpretations of junctions of contour elements are easily made, but not in order to attain globally minimal interpretations.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

A test of the minimum principle requires a perceptual coding system.

The minimum principle states that a perceiver will see the simplest possible interpretation of a pattern. Some theorists of human perception take this principle as a core explanatory concept. Others, especially Rock and Hochberg, hold the view that a perceptual minimum principle is untenable. Rock presents a great number of demonstrations which, in his opinion, rule out the minimum principle. Hochberg states that 'impossible' figures especially present a difficulty for this principle. It is argued here that, in order to test the minimum principle, a method is needed to describe interpretations of patterns in such a way that they can be ordered according to simplicity. To achieve this, Leeuwenberg's coding system was used. The analyses reported here of the patterns which Rock produces as evidence against the principle show that, contrary to Rock's claim, the way these patterns are preferentially perceived provides strong support for the minimum principle. Next, it is demonstrated that interpreting certain patterns as 'impossible' figures is not incompatible with the principle. Finally, it is argued that a test of the minimum principle is necessarily conflated with two other hypotheses, one concerning the metric of simplicity and one concerning the task conception of the experimental subjects.

Depth Perception↗
PubMed1985

Birkhoff revisited: beauty as a function of effect and means.

The beauty of visual patterns is quantified, starting from the assumption that beauty is maximal when a maximum of effect is attained with a minimum of means applied. Birkhoff has based his theory of beauty on this assumption, but his specification of means and effect differs from the one presented here. In our conception, effect is specified as the number of independent regularities (R) of a pattern not accounted for by the simplest interpretation of the pattern. This variable is closely allied to the concept of conjunctive ambiguity. The irregularities of a pattern that are not constrained by additional regularities (P) make up the means term of the means-effect analogy. An index of beauty (M) is defined, M = R - P. It is shown that there is substantial correlation between M and preference judgments for a set of Birkhoff's polygons. It is further demonstrated that M has relevance to describe properties of the relation of beauty to complexity, data of experiments on the aesthetic attractivity of combinations of patterns, and preferences for certain proportions of simple figures above others.

Art↗