Shape constancy and a perceptual bias towards symmetry

King, Michael C.; Meyer, Glenn E.; Tangney, John; Biederman, Irving

doi:10.3758/bf03204219

Cited by 35 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Evidence that bilaterally symmetric 3-D objects share the perceptual salience found for mirror-image symmetry in the frontoparallel plane comes from other studies as well, which suggest that symmetry may be an a priori expectation brought to bear in the course of object recognition [10,11,19,[36][37][38][39][40]. The symmetrical stimuli used here have a reflection about a plane in 3-D space, a property they share with many animals, plants, and man-made objects.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

The Perception of Symmetry in Depth: Effect of Symmetry Plane Orientation

Farell¹

2015

Symmetry

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Abstract:The visual system is sensitive to symmetries in the frontoparallel plane, and bilateral symmetry about a vertical axis has a particular salience. However, these symmetries represent only a subset of the symmetries realizable in three-dimensional space. The retinal image symmetries formed when viewing natural objects are typically the projections of three-dimensional objects-animals, for example-that have a symmetry in depth. To characterize human sensitivity to depth symmetry, experiments measured observers' ability to discriminate stereo displays that were symmetrically distributed in depth and those that were asymmetrically distributed. Disparity values were distributed about one of four planes passing through the z-axis and differing in frontoparallel orientation. Asymmetrical patterns were generated by perturbing one of these disparities. Symmetrical-asymmetrical discrimination thresholds were lowest for symmetry about the vertical plane and highest for the horizontal plane. Thresholds for discriminating repetitions and non-repetitions of depth values did not differ across the four planes, whereas discriminations for depth gradients differed from both the symmetry and repetition cases. The heightened sensitivity to symmetry in depth about the vertical plane is a 3-D analog of 2-D mirror-image symmetry performance and could be its source.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

The Perception of Symmetry in Depth: Effect of Symmetry Plane Orientation

Farell¹

2015

Symmetry

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“…Palmer (1980) showed that the subjective directionality of arrangements of equilateral triangles was based on the derivation of an axis of symmetry for the arrangement. King, Meyer, Tangney, and Biederman (1976) demonstrated that a perceptual bias toward symmetry contributed to apparent shape constancy effects. Garner (1974), Checkosky andWhitlock (1973), andPomerantz (1978) provided ample evidence that not only can symmetrical shapes be quickly discriminated from asymmetrical stimuli, but that the degree of symmetry was also a readily available perceptual distinction.…”

Section: Psychological Evidence For the Rapid Use Of Nonaccidental Rementioning

confidence: 99%

Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding.

Biederman

1987

Psychological Review

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4,885

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3,801

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The perceptual recognition of objects is conceptualized to be a process in which the image of the input is segmented at regions of deep concavity into an arrangement of simple geometric components, such as blocks, cylinders, wedges, and cones. The fundamental assumption of the proposed theory, recognition-by-components (RBC), is that a modest set of generalized-cone components, called geons (N ^ 36), can be derived from contrasts of five readily detectable properties of edges in a two-dimensional image: curvature, collinearity, symmetry, parallelism, and cotermmation. The detection of these properties is generally invariant over viewing position and image quality and consequently allows robust object perception when the image is projected from a novel viewpoint or is degraded. RBC thus provides a principled account of the heretofore undecided relation between the classic principles of perceptual organization and pattern recognition: The constraints toward regularization (Pragnanz) characterize not the complete object but the object's components. Representational power derives from an allowance of free combinations of the geons. A Principle of Componential Recovery can account for the major phenomena of object recognition: If an arrangement of two or three geons can be recovered from the input, objects can be quickly recognized even when they are occluded, novel, rotated in depth, or extensively degraded. The results from experiments on the perception of briefly presented pictures by human observers provide empirical support for the theory.Any single object can project an infinity of image configurations to the retina. The orientation of the object to the viewer can vary continuously, each giving rise to a different two-dimensional projection. The object can be occluded by other objects or texture fields, as when viewed behind foliage. The object need not be presented as a full-colored textured image but instead can be a simplified line drawing. Moreover, the object can even be missing some of its parts or be a novel exemplar of its particular category. But it is only with rare exceptions that an image fails to be rapidly and readily classified, either as an instance of a familiar object category or as an instance that cannot be so classified (itself a form of classification). A Do-It-\burself ExampleConsider the object shown in Figure 1. We readily recognize it as one of those objects that cannot be classified into a familiar category. Despite its overall unfamiliarity, there is near unanimity in its descriptions. We parse-or segment-its parts at regions of deep concavity and describe those parts with common, simple volumetric terms, such as "a block," "a cylinder" "a funnel or truncated cone." We can look at the zig-zag horizontal brace as a texture region or zoom in and interpret it as a series of connected blocks. The same is true of the mass at the lower left: we can see it as a texture area or zoom in and parse it into its various bumps.Although we know that it is not a familiar object, after a whilewe can ...

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“…Nevertheless, detecting symmetry in nonorthogonal planes seems to be a prerequisite if a biological visual system is to be able to use this kind of nonaccidental property in object recognition (as proposed recently by Biederman, 1987, andLowe, 1987). Some preliminary data indicate that, analogously to the aforementioned computer vision algorithms, the human visual system has a perceptual bias toward symmetry that is used in the recovery of a constant three-dimensional (3-0) shape from changing two-dimensional (2-0) images (King, Meyer, Tangney, & Biederman, 1976).…”

Section: Skewingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detection of symmetry in tachistoscopically presented dot patterns: Effects of multiple axes and skewing

Wagemans

Gool

d’Ydewalle

1991

Perception & Psychophysics

103

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We examined the effects of multiple axes and skewing on the detectability of symmetry in tachistoscopically presented (lOO-msec) dot patterns to test the role of normal grouping processes based on higher order regularities in element positions. In addition to the first-order regularities of orientational uniformity and midpoint collinearity (Jenkins, 1983), bilateral symmetry (BS) gives rise to second-order relations between two pairs of symmetric elements (represented by correlation quadrangles). We suggest that they allow the regularity (i.e., BS) to emerge simply as a result of the position-based grouping that takes place normally, so that no special symmetrydetection mechanism has to be postulated. In combination with previously investigated variablesnumber and orientation of axes-we introduced skewing (resulting from orthographic projection of BS) to manipulate the kind and number of higher order regularities. In agreement with our predictions, the data show that the effect of skewing angle (varied at three 15 0 steps, clockwise and counterclockwise) on the preattentive detectability of symmetry (measured with d') increases as the number of axes decreases. On the basis of some more specific findings, we suggest that it is not as much the number of correlation quadrangles that determines the saliency of a regularity as it is the degree to which they facilitate or "bootstrap" each other.During the time since Mach's (1886/1959) observations on the special status of bilateral or mirror symmetry for the human perceptual system, numerous experiments have been done on its detection and use. With respect to the latter, abundant data indicate the influence of symmetry on several perceptual and cognitive processes, such as scanning, encoding, short-term memory, recognition, representation, imagination, the establishment of a reference frame, and judgments of numerosity, complexity and goodness, or aesthetic value (see, e.g., Chipman

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Shape constancy and a perceptual bias towards symmetry

Cited by 35 publications

References 5 publications

The Perception of Symmetry in Depth: Effect of Symmetry Plane Orientation

The Perception of Symmetry in Depth: Effect of Symmetry Plane Orientation

Recognition-by-components: A theory of human image understanding.

Detection of symmetry in tachistoscopically presented dot patterns: Effects of multiple axes and skewing

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