Detecting global form: separate processes required for Glass and radial frequency patterns

David R. Badcock, Renita A. Almeida, J. Edwin Dickinson

Global processing of form information has been studied extensively using both Glass and radial frequency (RF) patterns. Models, with common early stages, have been proposed for the detection of properties of both pattern types but human performance has not been examined to determine whether the two pattern types interact in the manner this would suggest. The experiments here investigated whether low RF patterns and concentric Glass patterns, which are thought to tap the same level of processing in form-vision, are detected by a common mechanism. Six observers participated in two series of masking experiments. First: sensitivity to the presence of either coherent structure, or contour deformation, was assessed. The computational model predicted that detection of one pattern would be masked by the other. Second: a further experiment examined position coding. The model predicted that localizing the center of form in a Glass pattern would be affected by the presence of an RF pattern: sensitivity to a change of location should be reduced and the apparent location should be drawn toward the center of the masking pattern. However, the results observed in all experiments were inconsistent with the interaction predicted by the models, suggesting that separate neural mechanisms for global processing of signal are required to process these two patterns, and also indicating that the models need to be altered to preclude the interactions that were predicted but not obtained.