Oxyopia Abstract

April 26, 2002
Noon
489 Minor Hall

Steve Palmer, PhD
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
Host: Richard Ivry

This is an Irvin Rock Memorial Lecture.

Title

"Rethinking perceptual organization - Again!"

Abstract

In a 1994 paper, entitled "Rethinking perceptual organization," Palmer and Rock proposed an information processing theory of perceptual organization that attempted to specify the relations among organizational processes such as image segmentation, figure-ground organization, grouping, and parsing. In memory of my collaborator in this endeavor, I will review and update this line of inquiry. Specifically, I will describe some new principles of grouping and of figure-ground organization, and I will present experiments that bear on the relation between these two forms of organization. I will also consider the evidence on whether grouping operates early (before depth and constancy) or late (after depth and constancy) in visual processing, or whether it operates at both levels. Several of these results have shown our previous ideas to have been inadequate, and I will consider alternative ways of approaching these issues theoretically.

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