Abstract

Ambiguity resolution, perceptual grouping, and feature integration all occur seamlessly and subconsciously. When multiple regions of an image share ambiguous features, perceptual grouping can yield an integrated object percept rather than one of multiple objects, each with its individual features. Here, perceptual resolution and grouping of chromatically rivalrous Necker cubes were investigated in three experiments to determine the principles that underlie these coherent percepts. The first experiment showed perceptual grouping beyond independent resolution of each cube’s color and orientation, but the second experiment did not show grouping greater than expected from separate color- and orientation-grouping processes. The third experiment found no reliable difference in grouping when two features (color and orientation) were part of the same object versus when they were distributed across separate objects. These findings fail to support a role for feature conjunctions in grouping objects with multiple ambiguous features.

© 2020 Optical Society of America

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