The Perception of Dotted Forms

This report presents the results of a study of the detection, discrimination, and recognition of dotted forms presented in a degrading environment of dotted random 'visual noise'. It is shown that these processes are arranged in a hierarchy with more information required for each process than the previous one. A stimulus form effect is reported in the confusion matrices obtained in the discrimination and recognition experiments even though the raw percent correct scores show no stable form effect. The apparent density of the stimulus form seem to be less influential than the real density. A preliminary mathematical model of the psychophysical results is presented. Keywords: Computer vision, Perceptual model, Navigation and guidance, Vision detection, Stereopsis, Recognition. (sdw).