Psychophysical Evidence for the Interaction between Local and Global Border-Ownership Signals on a Closed Contour

Abstract

This study performed psychophysical experiments addressing how we perceive global closed contours whose polarity of border-ownership(i.e., figural side) are pre-assigned by using small rectangles which has the nature of figure. When ownership side was assigned toward inner side of the global closed contour, saliency of the contour was high; on the other hand when ownership was toward outer side, saliency was low. This difference may reflect the existence of interaction between global and local ownership signals.