Über die Abhängigkeit lokaler Konturintegration von Bottom-up-, Top-down- und globalen Gestaltprozessen

Shape perception in natural scenes relies on integration processes which construct a representation from local image features. An example is contour integration, grouping nearly collinear aligned edge elements into coherent forms. At the same time, perception is strongly modulated by the global form or context of a shape. A prominent example is the better visibility for cardinal as opposed to oblique shapes. Another factor modulating contour integration is attention, indicating the importance of the confluence of bottom-up (sensory input) and top-down signals (task demands) for this task. In the first study reported in this dissertation we use psychophysical studies and EEG recordings to investigate how contour integration is influenced by global factors in form and context of the contour. In a second study we investigate the impact of differing task demands (attention) on contour integration.