Depth capture and transparency of regions bounded by illusory and chromatic contours.

Spillmann and Redies noted that when a transparent textured pattern is held above the Ehrenstein figure, the subjective surfaces appear to lie not in the plane of the figures but in the plane of the overlying texture. In Experiment 1, we tested this phenomenon with chromatic squares and found that the perceived depth of regions bounded by the chromatic contours was captured by overlying texture planes when the square was equiluminous with the background. We then tested this phenomenon with a variety of illusory contour stimuli and found that it only occurs with figures involving fine line terminators, and not, for example, with the solid Kanizsa triangle. These results suggest that chromatic contours and the illusory contours induced by line terminators provide only weak binocular disparity signals and that these signals are easily overwhelmed by the disparity signals from the overlying luminance texture.