Simulations of induced visual scene fading with boundary offset and filling-in

Contour Erasure and Filling-in: Old Simulations Account for Most New Observations

Three recent studies used similar stimulus sequences to investigate mechanisms for brightness perception. Anstis and Greenlee (2014) demonstrated that adaptation to a flickering black and white outline erased the visibility of a subsequent target shape defined by a luminance increment or decrement. Robinson and de Sa (2012, 2013) used a flickering disk or annulus to show a similar effect. Here, a neural network model of visual perception (Francis & Kim, 2012), that previously explained properties of scene fading, is shown to also explain most of the erasure effects reported by Anstis and Greenlee and by Robinson and de Sa. The model proposes that in normal viewing conditions a brightness filling-in process is constrained by oriented boundaries, which thereby define separate regions of a visual scene. Contour adaptation can weaken the boundaries and thereby allow brightness signals to merge together, which renders target stimuli indistinguishable from the background. New simulations with the stimuli used by Anstis and Greenlee and Robinson and de Sa produce model output very similar to the perceptual experience of human observers. Finally, the model predicts that adaptation to illusory contours will not produce contour erasure.

Contour erasure and filling-in: New observations

Contour erasure is a newly established form of flicker adaptation that diminishes the saliency of object edges leading to their complete disappearance (Anstis, S. 2013. Journal of Vision, 13(2):25, 1-14). If these "disappeared" objects are then viewed on textured backgrounds, the observers experience filling-in, the illusory sense of background completion in the absence of physical input. In a series of observations, we demonstrate that contour erasure can greatly speed up the filling-in (or fading) of brightness. Based on these observations, we suggest that contour adaptation happens early in the magnocellular pathways.