18 found
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  1. Phenomena of illusory form: Can we bridge the gap between levels of explanation?Lothar Spillmann & Birgitta Dresp - 1995 - Perception 24:1333-1364.
    The major theoretical framework relative to the perception of illusory figures is reviewed and discussed in the attempt to provide a unifying explanatory account for these phenomena.
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  2. On illusory contours and their functional significance.Birgitta Dresp - 1997 - Current Psychology of Cognition 16:489-518.
    This article discusses the reasons why illusory contours are likely to result from adaptive perceptual mechanisms that have evolved across species to promote behavioral success.
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  3. Depth perception from pairs of overlapping cues in pictorial displays.Birgitta Dresp, Severine Durand & Stephen Grossberg - 2002 - Spatial Vision 15:255-276.
    The experiments reported herein probe the visual cortical mechanisms that control near–far percepts in response to two-dimensional stimuli. Figural contrast is found to be a principal factor for the emergence of percepts of near versus far in pictorial stimuli, especially when stimulus duration is brief. Pictorial factors such as interposition (Experiment 1) and partial occlusion Experiments 2 and 3) may cooperate, as generally predicted by cue combination models, or compete with contrast factors in the manner predicted by the FACADE model. (...)
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  4. Interaction of color and geometric cues in depth perception: When does red mean "near"?Christophe Guibal & Birgitta Dresp - 2004 - Psychological Research 69:30-40.
    Luminance and color are strong and self-sufficient cues to pictorial depth in visual scenes and images. The present study investigates the conditions Under which luminance or color either strengthens or overrides geometric depth cues. We investigated how luminance contrasts associated with color contrast interact with relative height in the visual field, partial occlusion, and interposition in determining the probability that a given figure is perceived as ‘‘nearer’’ than another. Latencies of ‘‘near’’ responses were analyzed to test for effects of attentional (...)
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  5. Apparent brightness enhancement in the Kanizsa square with and without illusory contours.Birgitta Dresp & Jean Lorenceau - 1990 - Perception 19:483-489.
    The perceived strength of darkness enhancement in the centre of surfaces surrounded or not surrounded by illusory contours was investigated as a function of proximity of the constituent elements of the display and their angular size. Magnitude estimation was used to measure the perception of the darkness phenomenon in white-on-grey stimuli. Darkness enhancement was perceived in both types of the stimuli used, but more strongly in the presence of illusory contours. In both cases, perceived darkness enhancement increased with increasing proximity (...)
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  6. Psychophysical evidence for low-level processing of illusory contours and surfaces in the Kanizsa square.Birgitta Dresp & Claude Bonnet - 1991 - Vision Research 31:1813-1817.
    Light increment thresholds were measured on either side of one of the illusory contours of a white-on-black Kanizsa square and on the illusory contour itself. The data show that thresholds are elevated when measured on either side of the illusory border. These elevations diminish with increasing distance of the target spot from the white elements which induce the illusory figure. The most striking result, however, is that threshold elevations are considerably lower or even absent when the target is located on (...)
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  7. A Plastic Temporal Brain Code for Conscious State Generation.Birgitta Dresp & Jean Durup - 2009 - Neural Plasticity 2009:1-15.
    Consciousness is known to be limited in processing capacity and often described in terms of a unique processing stream across a single dimension: time. In this paper, we discuss a purely temporal pattern code, functionally decoupled from spatial signals, for conscious state generation in the brain. Arguments in favour of such a code include Dehaene et al.’s long-distance reverberation postulate, Ramachandran’s remapping hypothesis, evidence for a temporal coherence index and coincidence detectors, and Grossberg’s Adaptive Resonance Theory. A time-bin resonance model (...)
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  8. Psychophysical measures of illusory form: Further evidence for local mechanisms.Birgitta Dresp & Claude Bonnet - 1993 - Vision Research 33:759-766.
    Detection thresholds for a small light spot were measured at various distances from the colinear inucer edges of white inducing elements on a dark background. The data show that thresholds are elevated when the target is located close to one or more inducing element(s). Threshold elevations diminish with increasing distance of the target from colinear edges and decreasing surface size of the inducing elements. gradients show the same tendencies. Tbe present observations add empirical support to the idea that illusory figures (...)
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  9. Spatial facilitation by color and luminance edges: boundary, surface, and attentional factors.Birgitta Dresp & Stephen Grossberg - 1995 - Vision Research 39 (20):3431-3443.
    The thresholds of human observers detecting line targets improve significantly when the targets are presented in a spatial context of collinear inducing stimuli. This phenomenon is referred to as spatial facilitation, and may reflect the output of long-range interactions between cortical feature detectors. Spatial facilitation has thus far been observed with luminance-defined, achromatic stimuli on achromatic backgrounds. This study compares spatial facilitation with line targets and collinear, edge-like inducers defined by luminance contrast to spatial facilitation with targets and inducers defined (...)
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  10. Contour Integration Across Gaps: From Local Contrast To Grouping.Birgitta Dresp & Stephen Grossberg - 1997 - Vision Research 7 (37):913-924.
    This article introduces an experimental paradigm to selectively probe the multiple levels of visual processing that influence the formation of object contours, perceptual boundaries, and illusory contours. The experiments test the assumption that, to integrate contour information across space and contrast sign, a spatially short-range filtering process that is sensitive to contrast polarity inputs to a spatially long-range grouping process that pools signals from opposite contrast polarities. The stimuli consisted of thin subthreshold lines, flashed upon gaps between collinear inducers which (...)
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  11. Dynamic characteristics of spatial mechanisms coding contour structures.Birgitta Dresp - 1999 - Spatial Vision 12:29-42.
    Spatial facilitation has been observed with luminance-defined, achromatic stimuli on achromatic backgrounds as well as with targets and inducers defined by colour contrast. This paper reviews psychophysical results from detection experiments with human observers showing the conditions under which spatially separated contour inducers facilitate the detection of simultaneously presented target stimuli. The findings point towards two types of spatial mechanisms: (i) Short-range mechanisms that are sensitive to narrowly spaced stimuli of small size and, at distinct target locations, selective to the (...)
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  12. The biological significance of color.Birgitta Dresp & Keith Langley - 2009 - In Darius Skusevich & Petras Matikas (eds.), Color Perception: Physiology, Processes and Analysis. Nova Science Publishers. pp. 110--115.
    How the visual systems of different species enable them to detect and discriminate colour patterns and how such visual abilities contribute to their survival is discussed. The influence of evolutionary and environmental pressures on both perceptual capacity and colour trait production is to be considered. Visual systems with different functional anatomy have evolved in response to such pressures.
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  13.  71
    Has the brain evolved to answer “binding questions” or to generate likely hypotheses about complex and continuously changing environments?Birgitta Dresp & Jean Charles Barthaud - 2006 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (1):75-76.
    We question the ecological plausibility as a general model of cognition of van der Velde's & de Kamps's combinatorial blackboard architecture, where knowledge-binding in space and time relies on the structural rules of language. Evidence against their view of the brain and an ecologically plausible, alternative model of cognition are brought forward.
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  14.  64
    The cognitive impenetrability hypothesis: Doomsday for the unity of the cognitive neurosciences?Birgitta Dresp - 1999 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 22 (3):375-376.
    The heuristic value of Pylyshyn's cognitive impenetrability theory is questioned in this commentary, mainly because, as it stands, the key argument cannot be challenged empirically. Pylyshyn requires unambiguous evidence for an effect of cognitive states on early perceptual mechanisms, which is impossible to provide because we can only infer what might happen at these earlier levels of processing on the basis of evidence collected at the post-perceptual stage. Furthermore, the theory that early visual processes cannot be modified by cognitive states (...)
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  15.  39
    The Kanizsa square does not engender a configural superiority effect.Birgitta Dresp - 1993 - Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society 31 (3):183-184.
    This article presents psychophysical evidence that the Kanizsa Square does not produce an 'object superiority effect' previously reported in similar Gestalt configurations. Implications of the findings for Gestalt theory are addressed.
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  16.  55
    Area, surface, and contour: Psychophysical correlates of three classes of pictorial completion.Birgitta Dresp - 1998 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21 (6):755-756.
    A simple working taxonomy with three classes of pictorial completion is proposed as an alternative to Pessoa et al.'s classification: area, surface, and contour completion. The classification is based on psychophysical evidence, not on the different phenomenal attributes of the stimuli, showing that pictorial completion is likely to involve mechanistic interactions in the visual system at different levels of processing. Whether the concept of “filling-in” is an appropriate metaphor for the visual mechanisms that may underlie perceptual completion is questioned.
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  17.  90
    Double, double, toil and trouble – fire burn, and theory bubble!Birgitta Dresp - 2003 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26 (4):409-410.
    Lehar's Gestalt Bubble model introduces a computational approach to holistic aspects of three-dimensional scene perception. The model as such has merit because it manages to translate certain Gestalt principles of perceptual organization into formal codes or algorithms. The mistake made in this target article is to present the model within the theoretical framework of the question of consciousness. As a scientific approach to the problem of consciousness, the Gestalt Bubble fails for several reasons. This commentary addresses three of these: (1) (...)
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  18.  42
    External regularities and adaptive signal exchanges in the brain.Birgitta Dresp - 2001 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24 (4):663-664.
    Shepard's concept of internalization does not suggest mechanisms which help to understand how the brain adapts to changes, how representations of a steadily changing environment are updated or, in short, how brain learning continues throughout life. Neural mechanisms, as suggested by Barlow, may prove a more powerful alternative. Brain theories such as Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) propose mechanisms to explain how representational activities may be linked in space and time. Some predictions of ART are confirmed by psychophysical and neurophysiological data. (...)
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