Contrast and conspicuity in preattentive texture perception

Abstract

Preattentive texture discrimination is thought to occur as the result of differences in the first-order statistics of conspicuous local features known as textons (Julesz, 1984a, 1984b). The present study investigated discrimination as a function of two texton properties: (1) blob contrast and (2) texton conspicuity as a function of contrast polarity. The results demonstrated that preattentive texture discrimination is a function of differences in contrast distribution, and that conspicuity varies with texton type. © 1986 Psychonomic Society, Inc.