Texture properties affecting the accuracy of surface attitude judgements

Prior studies of the perception of surface shape and attitude from texture have focused on measuring the sensitivity of the visual system to the various geometric deformations induced by projection. Studies that examine variations in accuracy caused by spatial properties of the texture itself are fewer, and often confound multiple, potentially important properties. Here we examine the perception of surface attitude for a broad range of synthetic textures that may represent the types of structure encountered in the natural world. These stimuli allow us to isolate the respective roles of texels, spatial scale structure, discrete symmetries and regularity in the judgement of both the slant and tilt of textured surfaces. Texels, spatial scale structure and discrete symmetries were all found to play a role. Discrete rotational symmetries were found to be particularly important for accurate tilt estimation, likely mediated by skew symmetry and/or linear perspective cues. The operational range of viewing distances over which accurate attitude judgements can be made is greatly extended when texture structure is distributed over multiple scales. Small biases caused by variations in the spin of symmetric textures are observed and are consistent, at least qualitatively, with a Bayesian cue combination model previously proposed by Saunders and Knill (2001).