Lower Region: A New Gestalt Principle of Figure-Ground Organization

Abstract:
Figure-ground organization is the process by which the visual system segregates figures, which lie in the foreground of the visual field, from backgrounds. The gestalt psychologists demonstrated many laws or principles that the human visual system uses to separate figure from ground, including area (smaller regions are perceived as figure) and symmetry (vertically symmetric regions are perceived as figure). We demonstrate and study a new principle of figure-ground organization, termed "lower region": In a figure-ground display containing two regions, one in the upper visual field and one in the lower visual field, subjects perceive the lower region as figure. We report findings that demonstrate that the lower-region bias is not due to (a) biased stimulus displays, (b) color or luminance differences, or (c) eye movements and overt shifts of spatial attention. The tendency to call lower regions 'figure' may be related to inputs to figure-ground processes from the dorsal "where" visual pathway: The dorsal pathway is biased toward processing the lower visual field (see Previc, 1990).