Textural segmentation, second-order statistics, and textural elements.

Beck (1972, 1973) hypothesized that textural segmentation occurs strongly on the basis of simple properties such as brightness, color, size, and the slopes of contours and lines of the elemental descriptors of a texture or textural elements. The experiment reported supports the hypothesis that specific stimulus features, rather than second-order statistics, account for textural segmentation. The results agree with Julesz (1981a,b) who has reported evidence disproving his original conjecture of the importance of second-order statistics. Julesz (1981a,b) now hypothesizes textural segmentation to be a function of local features which he called textons. Textons are features that give textural segmentation when textures have identical second-order statistics. The two hypotheses are to date in complete agreement on the stimulus features producing textural segmentation, and the experiment reported is consistent with both.