The influence of orientation and contrast flicker on contour saliency of outlines of everyday objects

One of the most important tasks of the visual system is the extraction of edges and object contours, and the integration of discrete elements to form a coherent global percept. A great deal is known about the spatial properties of contour extraction, but less is known about the dynamics and spatio-temporal aspects. We used Gabor-rendered outlines of real-world objects, where we could manipulate low-level properties, such as element orientation and phase, while incorporating higher-level properties, such as object complexity and identity, to study dynamic relationships in object detection. First we manipulated the time available for integration by changing back and forth between coherent and non-coherent orientations of the contour elements. We then manipulated contrast flicker by reversing the spatial phase of the Gabor elements at various frequencies. We found similar results to earlier studies on contour detection: detection was better for contrast flicker than for orientation flicker, and detection performance was curvature-dependent for orientation flicker but not for contrast flicker. Our results support the existence of at least two temporal frequency channels in the visual system, one low-pass and one band-pass peaking around 10–12 Hz. In addition, we found that object properties, such as identity and complexity, affected detection performance.

Research highlights
► Using Gaborized outlines of real-world objects, we replicated and extended earlier studies on contour detection.
► Detection was better for contrast flicker than for orientation flicker.
► Detection performance was curvature-dependent for orientation flicker but not for contrast flicker.
► Object properties such as identity and complexity affected detection performance.