Tech Report: Figure-Ground Organization

[Shaun Vecera]

The following Technical Report is available both electronically from
our own FTP server or in hard copy form.  Instructions for obtaining 
copies may be found at the end of this post.
 
ftp://hydra.psy.cmu.edu:/pub/pdp.cns/pdp.cns.95.3.ps.Z
 
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     FIGURE-GROUND ORGANIZATION AND SHAPE RECOGNITION PROCESSES:
			  AN INTERACTIVE ACCOUNT
 
	     Shaun P. Vecera       Randall C. O'Reilly
 
		    Technical Report PDP.CNS.95.3
			      June 1995
 
Traditional theories of visual processing have assumed that
figure-ground organization must precede object representation and
identification.  Such a view seems logically necessary: How can one
recognize an object before the visual system knows which region should
be the figure?  However, a number of behavioral studies have shown that
subjects are more likely to call a familiar region ``figure'' relative
to a less familiar region, a finding inconsistent with the traditional
accounts of visual processing.  To explain these results, Peterson and
colleagues have proposed an additional ``prefigural'' object
recognition process that operates before any figure-ground
organization (M. A. Peterson, 1994).  We propose a more parsimonious
interactive account of figure-ground organization in which partial
results of figure-ground processes interact with object
representations in a hierarchical system similar to that envisioned by
traditional theories.  We present a computational model that embodies
this graded, interactive approach and show that this model can account
several behavioral results, including orientation effects, exposure
duration effects, and the combination of multiple cues.  Finally,
these principles of graded, interactive processing offer the
possibility of providing a more general information processing
framework for visual and higher-cognitive systems.
 
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Retrieval information for pdp.cns TRs:
 
unix> ftp 128.2.248.152                 # hydra.psy.cmu.edu
Name: anonymous
Password: <email address>
ftp> cd pub/pdp.cns
ftp> binary
ftp> get pdp.cns.95.3.ps.Z
ftp> quit
unix> zcat pdp.cns.95.3.ps.Z | lpr      # or however you print postscript
 
NOTE:  
 
The compressed file is 128K.
Uncompressed, the file is 313K.
The printed version is 51 total pages.
 
For those who do not have FTP access, physical copies can be requested from
Barbara Dorney <bd1q+ at andrew.cmu.edu>.