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Published VersionCC BY V4.0, Open Access
Journal article
Attentional selection and illusory surface appearance
Scientific Reports, Vol.9, pp.1-8
2019
PMCID: PMC6379407
PMID: 30778147
Abstract
The visual system is required to compute objects from partial image structure so that figures can be segmented from their backgrounds. Although early clinical, behavioral, and modeling data suggested that such computations are performed pre-attentively, recent neurophysiological evidence suggests that surface filling-in is influenced by attention. In the present study we developed a variant of the classical Kanizsa illusory triangle to investigate whether voluntary attention modulates perceptual filling-in. Our figure consists of “pacmen” positioned at the tips of an illusory 6-point star and alternating in polarity such that two illusory triangles are implied to compete with one another within the figure. On each trial, observers were cued to attend to only one triangle, and then compared its lightness with a matching texture-defined triangle. We found that perceived lightness of the illusory shape depended on the polarity of pacmen framing the attended triangle. Our findings thus reveal that, for overlapping illusory surfaces, lightness judgements can depend on voluntary attention. Our novel stimulus may prove useful in future attempts to link neurophysiological effects to phenomenology.
Details
- Title
- Attentional selection and illusory surface appearance
- Authors
- William J. Harrison (Corresponding Author) - Northeastern UniversityAlvin J. Ayeni (Author) - Northeastern UniversityPeter J. Bex (Author) - Northeastern University
- Publication details
- Scientific Reports, Vol.9, pp.1-8
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2019
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-018-37084-7
- ISSN
- 2045-2322
- PMID
- 30778147; PMC6379407
- Copyright note
- © The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
- Organisation Unit
- School of Health - Psychology
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99996797502621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
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- Web Of Science research areas
- Neurosciences