Figure-ground perception

The effects of the onset, offset, and sustained presence of inducing lines on the perceived position of test lines were independently investigated in a vernier alignment task. For spatial separations larger than 2.3 min, repulsion effects were always observed. For the smallest spatial separation, 2.3 min, the effect of the inducing lines was attraction for 0 and 195 SOAs. Minimal attraction was observed for a 3000 SOA. However, when the offset effect was isolated using the 3000 SOA and a 0 ISI, a large repulsion effect was observed for the 2.3 min spatial separation, as well as for the larger spatial separations. These results indicate that the temporal separation between visual elements is as important in determining perceived position as their spatial separation, which has been demonstrated in earlier studies (Badcock & Westheimer, 1985). A differential gradient model is proposed which accounts for these findings in terms of excitatory and inhibitory interactions within an ensemble of position-sensitive units.