Local and global factors in visual occlusion.

Although interest in the phenomenon of visual occlusion is of very long standing, only a small number of experimental studies have been reported, and available theories fail to give satisfactory explanations of the data. In this paper the efficacy of local factors in organising the perception of globally regular occlusion patterns is explored. Three experiments are reported in which the relative contribution of local and global factors to the salience of percepts is investigated. It is demonstrated that local factors play a very important role in the perception of these kinds of patterns.