ENS, room 235B, 24 rue Lhomond, 75005 Paris
Abstract:
In most models of vision, low level visual tasks are explained by low
level neural mechanisms. For example, in crowding, perception of a
target is impeded by nearby elements because, as proposed, responses of
neurons coding for nearby elements are pooled. Indeed, performance
deteriorated when a vernier stimulus was flanked by two lines, one on
each side. However, performance improved strongly when the lines were
extended to squares. Classic models cannot explain this uncrowding
effect because the neighboring lines are part of the squares. I will
show how these and other simple behavioral results challenge many common
sense ideas about vision and propose a new framework based on
Gestalt-like processing.