Preferential processing of cardinal over oblique orientations in human vision

Abstract

The oblique effect-poorer performance when contours are in oblique meridians-is here extended from the discrimination of line-orientation to the tilt illusion and to the detection and contextual induction of curvature. The distinction is made between a contour's susceptibility to contextual perturbation and its capacity to induce such perturbation, for which the oblique effect is only about one half. That the cardinal/oblique superiority is retained for the orientation of illusory borders and for the implicit orientation of shapes lacking explicit rectilinear delineation has implications for its neural substrate. To the extent that a geometrical-visual illusion, such as Poggendorff's or Hering's, depends on interaction in the domain of contour orientation, it manifests a corresponding orientational anisotropy. On the other hand, visual functions that govern whether and how well a boundary is visible are invariant with orientation.