The Role of Uniform Textures in Making Texture Elements Visible in the Visual Periphery

Abstract

There are important differences between central and peripheral vision. With respect to shape, contours retain phenomenal sharpness, although some contours disappear if they are near other contours. This leads to some uniform textures to appear non-uniform (Honeycomb illusion, Bertamini et al., 2016). Unlike other phenomena of shape perception in the periphery, this illusion is showing how continuity of the texture does not contribute to phenomenal continuity. We systematically varied the relationship between central and peripheral regions, and we collected subjective reports (how far can one see lines) as well as judgments of line orientation. We used extended textures created with a square grid and some additional lines that are invisible when they are located at the corners of the grid, or visible when they are separated from the grid (control condition). With respects to subjective reports, we compared the region of visibility for cases in which the texture was uniform (Exp 1a), or when in a central region the lines were different (Exp 1b). There were no differences, showing no role of objective uniformity on visibility. Next, in addition to the region of visibility we measured sensitivity using a forced-choice task (line tilted left or right) (Exp 2). The drop in sensitivity with eccentricity matched the size of the region in which lines were perceived in the illusion condition, but not in the control condition. When participants were offered a choice to report of the lines were present or absent (Exp 3) they confirmed that they did not see them in the illusion condition, but saw them in the control condition. We conclude that mechanisms that control perception of contours operate differently in the periphery, and override prior expectations, including that of uniformity. Conversely, when elements are detected in the periphery, we assign to them properties based on information from central vision, but these shapes cannot be identified correctly when the task requires such discrimination.