Effect of spatial attention in early vision for the modulation of the perception of border-ownership

Abstract

We propose a computational model consisting of mutually linked V1, V2, and PP modules. The model reproduces the effect of attention in the determination of border-ownership (BO) that tells which side of the contour owns the border. The V2 module determines BO based on surrounding contrast extracted by the V1 module that could be influenced by top-down spatial attention from the PP module. We carried out the simulations of the model with random-block ambiguous figures to test whether spatial attention alters BO for these meaningless stimuli. To compare quantitatively these results with human perception, we carried out psychophysical experiments corresponding to the simulations. The results of these two showed good agreement in that the perception of BO was flipped when altering the location of spatial attention. These results suggest that spatial attention is a crucial factor for the modulation of figure direction in meaningless figures, and that the effects of spatial attention in early visual area are crucial for the modulation of figure direction. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.