Perception of 3D Shape in Complex Scenes

Doctoral thesis Katinka van der Kooij

promotor: professor F. A. J. Verstraten, co-promotor: dr. S. F. te Pas

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Visual context influences perception of 3D shape. In shape contrast illusions, for instance, the difference between shape and context is perceptually enhanced. An apple in the midst of melons will look smaller than the same apple surrounded by grapes. Such contextual effects are well-established, yet little is known about the mechanisms by which the visual system integrates information from shape and context. In this thesis, we performed a series of psychophysical experiments where we studied the relation between contextual information and shape perception. This way, we showed that the visual system efficiently uses contextual information. When visual information is clear, the visual system uses context to ignore redundant information. When information is unclear, the visual system uses context information to generate a clearer image.  

Here, the individual chapters can be downloaded and demos of the stimuli used in the various experiments can be viewed with anaglyph glasses by clicking on the chapter links below.