A psychophysical study of visual texture

I. Introduction One of the major historical traditions in psychological research has been the investigation of the ways in which an observer can differentiate or discriminate various sensory events in relation to some objective dimension of the event. Furthermore, the features of sensory events investigated have been abstract properties of the stimulus for which there were already existing physical-measure correlates such as brightness, hue, distance, etc. The nature of sensory events, however, does not necessarily restrict one to investigation of these features. Gibson has recently formulated a theoretical view of visual perception in which the status of these features is secondary. His position asserts that the immediate given of visual experience is surfaces and thus directs concern to the properties of surfaces as sensory events. Although the concept of texture of a surface is a central one in his scheme, there seems to be a complete lack of psychophysical investigation of this notion in the literature. The above considerations led to the formulation of the present problem. Specifically, the relationship between a set of physical measure· operations and a set of observer responses on a class of stimuli denoted as "textured surfaces" was investigated. Texture in this study is defined as the distribution of alternations in light intensity over a surface on which areas of equal intensity occupy small portions of the surface relative to its total extent [TRUNCATED].

Grantor dc:publisher

Boston University

Year dc:date.issued

1956

Author dc:creator

• Kaizer, Herbert

Statement dc:rights

• Based on investigation of the BU Libraries' staff, this work is free of known copyright restrictions.

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Dc Identifier Other

b14637169

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.bu.edu:2144/23923