Configuration effects on texture transparency.

This study examined the factors producing the perception of transparency between overlaid regions composed of Gabor micro-patterns as functions of their spatial frequency, separation of overlaid regions, and types of orientation modulation. The results showed that the likelihood of perceiving transparency was high both when (1) the difference in Gabor spatial frequency between regions was large, and (2) the region boundary, which was formed by short-range orientation differences in the Gabor micro-patterns, clearly emerged. We conclude that texture transparency appears to result from an interaction between a boundary-detection mechanism defining the shape of each region and a surface-detection mechanism assigning the boundary.