Attention and figure-ground perception

The visual system segregates multi-region displays into figures and grounds. With respect to the bordering contour, figures are perceived as having shape and being in front, whereas grounds do not have shape and continue behind. Everything else being equal, certain cues influence which region is perceived as figure. The present work demonstrates that two of these cues, surroundedness and meaningfulness, in addition to influencing figural assignment, automatically draw attention to the figural side of the contour. Eight experiments are described that support this position. The basic experimental paradigm treated figure-ground cues as analogous to automatic attentional cues and measured the response to a target presented in either the figure or the ground. The first three experiments demonstrated that participants were able to detect a target in a surrounded region faster than in the surrounding area. The fourth experiment replicated this finding using meaningfulness as a cue to figure-ground status. The fifth experiment found that participants showed better discrimination of a target in the figure than in the ground. The sixth experiment showed that the effect was not present throughout the entire figure or ground region, but only near the bordering contour. The seventh experiment demonstrated that effects were not due to local effects of convexity, and the eighth experiment showed that results could not be attributed to eye movements. It is concluded that the visual system does use figure-ground cues to allocate spatial attention to one side of a contour.