Spatial organization affects lightness perception on articulated surrounds

The articulation effect refers to a change in lightness contrast induced by adding small patches of different luminances to a uniform background surrounding a target in a lightness contrast display. This study investigated how local luminance signals are integrated to generate the articulation effect. We asked whether spatial organization due to perceptual grouping can influence the articulation effect even when the spatially averaged luminance of the surrounds is held constant. Grouping factors used were common-fate motion (Experiment 1), similarity of orientation (Experiment 2), and synchrony (Experiment 3). Results of all experiments consistently showed that the articulation effect was larger when the target was strongly grouped with the articulation patches. These findings provide converging evidence for the effects of spatial organization on the articulation effect. Moreover, they suggest that lightness computation underlying the articulation effect depends on a middle-level representation in which perceptual organization is at least partially established. The changes in lightness perception due to spatial organization could be accounted for by the double-anchoring theory of lightness (Bressan, 2006b).