Publication detail

Although Attneave (1954, Psychological Review, 61, 183-193) and Biederman (1987, Psychological Review, 94, 115-147) have argued that curved contour segments are most important in shape perception, Kennedy and Domander (1985, Perception, 14, 367-370) showed that fragmented object contours are better identifiable when straight segments are shown. We used the set of line drawings published by Snodgrass and Vanderwart (1980, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Memory, 6, 174-215), to make outline versions that could be used to investigate this issue with a larger and more heterogeneous stimulus set. Fragments were placed either around the "salient" points or around the midpoints (points midway between two salient points), creating curved versus relatively straight fragments when the original outline was fragmented (experiment 1), or angular and straight fragments when straight-line versions were fragmented (experiment 2). We manipulated fragment length in each experiment except the last one, in which we presented only selected points (experiment 3). While fragmented versions were on average more identifiable when straight fragments were shown, certain objects were more identifiable when the curved segments or the angles were shown. A tentative explanation of these results is presented in terms of an advantage for straight segments during grouping processes for outlines with high part salience, and an advantage for curved segments during matching processes for outlines with low part salience.

@article{panis_etal:2008:Identification,
    title   = {{I}dentification of everyday objects on the basis of fragmented versions of outlines},
    author  = {Panis, Sven and De Winter, Joeri and Vandekerckhove, Joachim and Wagemans, Johan},
    year    = {2008},
    journal = {Perception},
    volume  = {37},
    pages   = {271--289}
}