Rubin originally noted that vision distinguishes figures from back ground, even within two-dimen sional (2-D) displays. He and other Gestaltists1 suggested on the basis of introspection that figures are seen as having a definite shape, whereas ad joining ground is seen as shapeless despite the dividing contour in com mon with the figure. In a previous article,2 we presented recent perfor mance studies showing that the di viding edge between figure and ground is automatically assigned to the figurai shape, even when sub jects attempt to judge just the divid ing edge itself. As a result, recogni tion of the dividing edge is better if a test stimulus has this edge assigned in the same direction as in the pre ceding figurai shape. We argued that one-sided edge assignment provides an efficient heuristic for deriving the likely three-dimensional (3-D) source of any 2-D image. In the present review, we explore the con sequences of such edge assignment for shape representation and suggest an account for why only figures ap pear shaped.
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Driver et al. (1995) studied this question.