Amodal completion of partly occluded surfaces: is there a mosaic stage?

Recent investigators have proposed that amodal completion is a sequential process requiring a preliminary mosaic stage. Results of 6 studies of the time course of completion processes show support for this mosaic-first view with pictorial displays, but not with displays involving occlusion specified by binocular parallax or when pictorial displays were observed monocularly. These results still do not rule out the mosaic-first view. A parallel model, however, can account more economically for the available data.