Clouds are not normal occluders, and other oddities: more interactions between textures and lightness illusions

Abstract

Identical textured disks can appear white or black depending on the luminance properties of the surrounding textured region (B. L. Anderson & J. Winawer, 2005, 2008). This occurs when the stimulus is perceptually segmented in three layers: (1) a uniform foreground disk, (2) a uniform background surface, and (3) a cloud-like layer that covers parts of the foreground and background regions. However, local occlusion cues fail to predict the pattern of data observed, suggesting that in some cases a different strategy may be adopted depending on texture characteristics (F. J. A. M. Poirier, 2009). Here, we produced a variety of stimuli using three different textures and several luminance configurations (including the White and inverse White configurations and the Anderson-Winawer illusion), for which participants reported the perceived characteristics of the central disk (e.g., lightness, transparency, whether the disk was textured). The results show several interactions between textures and luminance configurations, which we account for using mathematical models of previously documented strategies. We show how the strategies chosen depend on an interaction between texture properties and luminance configuration.