One way or another

by Michelle T. de los Santos

Images can really be ambiguous. There are amazing images that we perceive differently and sometimes we get confuse and argue about it, like what’s the wrong or right image, but technically, it's one way or another. For example, in the images above, we can perceive two different images, right?! In picture no.3, the famous Rubin's vase-face image, it can be a vase or faces, both are right. How and Why do we perceive such things, it has something to do with the concept of figure-ground phenomenon and attention. The relationship of arts and perception is really fascinating, cool okay! :)

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Peterson and Kimchi (2008) defined figure-ground segmentation in their article as the process by which the visual system organizes a visual scene into figures and their backgrounds. Gestalt psychologists were the first to recognize the importance of figure-ground segmentation, determining figures and grounds in terms of their phenomenal appearance. They discussed in their article that figures appear to have a definite shape, so that their bounding contours are assigned as belonging to them, while, grounds are shapeless near the contours they share with figures and appear to continue behind the figures near those contours. For short, figure is the object while ground is the background. So easy (haha! kidding!:P). This figure-ground concept is really common in our lives that's why we must appreciate it 'cause we experience it in our daily living. Hence, indeed, figure-ground is one of the most important visual processes because figure-ground distinctions are fundamental to the visual perception of objects and to visuomotor behavior (Peterson and Kimchi, 2008).

Therefore, one explanation for picture no.3, the faces and the vase can be either the figure or the ground depending on where we focus are attention and what we consider as the figure. Gets? Like if you focus your attention to the black color forming the faces, that would be the figure and the white will just be the background, on the other hand, if you focus your attention to the white color forming a vase, as the figure, then the black color will just be the background of that image, gets? Hence, one way or another, both are correct. Same with the picture on the left. You can see either a man or a woman's leg. Nice right?!;D I hope that you already understand your visual perception in ambiguous images.

My concern here is the argument of the study that I found about figure-ground phenomenon and attention. The study of Peterson and Kimchi (2008) reported in their article and addressed one aspect of this issue: Can figure-ground segmentation occur without attention? Hmmm…think about it!:) Basically, that's gonna be our main goal, to answer that question, is it a yes? or a no? hmmm... I learned in the article that the question of whether or not figure-ground segmentation can occur without attention is unresolved. Although early theorists assumed it can, but the evidence is said to be limited and open to alternative interpretations.

Peterson and Kimchi (2008) examined this issue by asking participants to perform a demanding change detection task on a small matrix presented on a task irrelevant scene of alternating regions organized into figures and grounds by convexity. Images a, b, c, d were used (see picture on the right). For more information (it’s okay if you my beloved readers can’t absorb these info's, I understand!;D), their hypothesis was stated, “if the unattended backdrop was segmented into figures and grounds, then congruency effects would be obtained; that is, responses to same targets would be faster or more accurate when the backdrop organization stayed the same than when it changed, and responses to different targets would be faster or more accurate when the backdrop organization changed than when it stayed the same.”

Peterson and Kimchi (2008) had two kinds of experiment, they mentioned that in Experiment 1, “we found that changes in the figure-ground organization of the backdrop produced congruency effects on performance of the target-change task, even though accuracy in reporting these changes was no better than chance.” In Experiment 2, “we instructed participants to attend to the scene backdrops and ignore the matrices; in this case, explicit reports about the figure-ground organization of the backdrop were highly accurate.”

Anyway, that's basically their methods, to cut it short and to avoid the nerdy talk/terms, let's proceed to the results!:) Base on their experiments, results of the study provided clear evidence that figure-ground segmentation can occur for unattended stimuli. The article mentioned that spatial attention can act as a cue for figure-ground task, but do not speak to the question of whether or not attention is required for figure-ground segmentation to occur. The researchers discussed that changes in the scene’s figure-ground organization produced reliable congruency effects on performance. These congruency effects arose despite inattentional blindness to the scene backdrop. When probed with surprise questions, participants could report neither the figure-ground status of the region on which the target appeared in the preceding display nor whether the figure-ground status of the region had changed during the preceding trial, but when participants attended to the scene backdrop, their answers were highly accurate (Peterson and Kimchi, 2008).

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THUS! These results clearly show that figure-ground segmentation can occur without focal attention. Attention is not necessary. YAY! (haha okay) that’s it! It’s a yes yes for us! Wooot! :)
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The study seems simple, right? 'cause they are just looking for a yes or no answer BUT that yes and no that easy to say and will be needing a thorough research before concluding the final reliable answer. For me, the study did well! It’s not an easy one. The researchers were quite good as they put limitations of the study and considered other factors. They search and compare for other studies to have a reliable answer for their hypothesis.

Let's appreciate figure-ground! (appreciate it more!) :)

Reference:
Peterson, M.A., & Kimchi, R. (2008). Figure-ground segmentation can occur without attention. Psychological Science, 19, 660-668.