Curvature and separation discrimination at texture boundaries

Visual discrimination of contour curvature was investigated by using contours defined by the locus of points at which the phase of a square-wave grating was shifted by 180 degrees (a texture boundary). Curvature-increment thresholds were measured for contour curvatures from 0.31 to 10.65 deg-1, for grating spatial frequencies of 4.0 and 16.0 cycles per degree (cpd), and for gratings in either sine or cosine phase at the point of maximum curvature. Thresholds for these conditions were compared with curvature discrimination at black-white edges. Grating phase had no effect on performance at any curvature or grating frequency, but 16.0-cpd gratings produced a threshold elevation at all curvatures by an average factor of 2.4. Two-line separation discrimination was also measured for lines defined by texture boundaries. These data can be predicted by a model incorporating end-stopped complex cells of a type reported physiologically in primate area V2.