Outline (17/03/13)

The Oxford Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Edited by

Johan Wagemans
University of Leuven, Belgium
johan.wagemans@psy.kuleuven.be
http://www.gestaltrevision.be

Perceptual organization is a central aspect of perception. Indeed, it is often considered as the

interface between the low-level building blocks of incoming sensations and the high-level
interpretation of these inputs as meaningful objects, scenes and events in the world. This is most
obvious in the visual modality, where the features signaled by the neurons in low-level cortical areas
must be combined in order for the high-level areas to make sense of them. But a similar functionality
of perceptual organization is present in other modalities too (e.g., audition, haptics). In other words,
for vision, perceptual organization is more or less synonymous with mid-level vision, the two-way
relay station between low- and high-level vision, referring to the wide range of processes such as
perceptual grouping, figure-ground organization, filling-in, completion, perceptual switching, etc.
Such processes are most notable in the context of shape perception but they also play a role in
texture perception, lightness perception, color perception, motion perception, depth perception, etc.
In sum, perceptual organization deals with a variety of perceptual phenomena of central interest. No
wonder then that this is a lively area of research, studied from many different perspectives, including
psychophysics, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, neurophysiology, and
computational modeling. Given its central importance in phenomenal experience, perceptual
organization has also figured prominently in old Gestalt writings on the topic, touching upon deep
philosophical issues regarding mind-brain relationships and consciousness. In addition to its historical
importance, it still attracts a great deal of interest from people working in applied areas like visual
art, design, architecture, music, and so forth.
The goal of this handbook is to bring together the different areas comprising contemporary research
in the field of perceptual organization into one comprehensive and authoritative volume. This will
provide a broad and extensive review of the current literature, written in an accessible form for
scholars and students, and functioning as the state-of-the-art reference work for many years to
come. The handbook will cover the whole range of topics and approaches sketched above.

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Background and aims

Intended readership
The handbook is aimed primarily at researchers and students interested in perceptual organization.
The majority of these will be vision scientists (an interdisciplinary network of psychologists,
physicists, optometrists, ophthalmologists, neuroscientists, engineers all working on vision) but
given the central importance of perceptual organization in the broader area of sensation and
perception (a topic covered in all psychology teaching programs across the world), all experimental
and cognitive psychologists will be interested as well. In addition, in view of the philosophical,
historical, and cultural roots of the Gestalt tradition in which perceptual organization played a key
role, one can also expect some interest from other humanities in addition to psychology. Finally,
perceptual organization has recently become a hot topic in computer vision and computer graphics,
as well as in web design, art, and other applied areas. Although most of the material covered might
be rather technical to satisfy the needs of the public at large, intellectuals from all kinds of
disciplinary background will find material in this handbook that will trigger their curiosity.

The handbook will be the most comprehensive coverage possible of the domain of perceptual
organization, in about 60 different chapters and totaling about 1,000 pages. The intended breakdown
of chapters is detailed in a separate section below. The handbook will begin with a brief but
necessary sketch of some historical, conceptual, philosophical, and methodological background
(Section I), because not everyone of the intended audience is equally well familiar with the Gestalt
tradition. The remainder of the handbook will obviously go way beyond this tradition but it is useful
to see where most contemporary work is coming from. The subsequent six sections will cover a wide
variety of topics belonging to perceptual organization in vision, from core topics such as perceptual
grouping (Section II) and figure-ground organization (Section III), to specific issues pertaining to midlevel vision in texture and pattern perception (Section IV), surface and color perception (Section V),
form, shape, object and face perception (Section VI), and motion and event perception (Section VII).
Although it is always somewhat arbitrary how to order such sections (and the chapters within a
section), we mainly follow an order from simple to more complex, and from more low-level to more
high-level issues. The next section will go beyond vision and cover perceptual organization in other
modalities (Section VIII), including cross-modal perceptual organization, synesthesia and perceptualmotor organization. Next, we deal with a wide range of applications of perceptual organization
(Section IX). The handbook will end with a section devoted to theoretical issues that cross all of the
above domains (Section X), including development, plasticity, individual differences (e.g., patient
work), links to attention and consciousness, and so forth.
Although the above division in sections may give the impression that cross-modal aspects will be
dealt with in only a few, separate, dedicated chapters, this is not correct. In fact, the phenomenal
unity of perceptual experience was a crucial component of Gestalt thinking. The integration of
sensory inputs from the same or different modalities according to common principles will therefore
be an important theme throughout the book. Cross-modal comparisons will also be covered in other
chapters, in addition to the separate section devoted to it.
Coherence is an important added value of a handbook like this, compared to reviews published in
journals and scattered around in different outlets. To maximize this, I will ask authors to relate the

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Scope and general approach

literature they cover to some central tenets of the Gestalt approach for instance, that the
properties of the parts (at least partially) depend on those of the wholes. If themes like this will occur
throughout the book, the total value of the book as a whole will be more than the sum of the value
of the different individual chapters.
To avoid the fate of so many book chapters that they are lost on a shelve in a library somewhere,
on-line access and availability on the web will be of utmost importance to reach the largest possible
audience and impact on the field.
All authors will be asked to produce articles of around 8,000 words that provide a substantive review
of the area agreed to belong to the scope of the chapter, with strong emphasis on the most
important empirical findings and theoretical views, and a balanced approach to controversial issues.
They will be asked to prepare the article specifically for this handbook (not copying/pasting from
previous writings), including some literature search to have the broadest and most representative
coverage possible. Authors will be allowed to take position in current debates, as long as they
acknowledge this when it is not a consensus opinion. Figures will be important in most of the
chapters and authors will be given some freedom to decide how many they will need (which may
vary greatly between chapters). Color figures should definitely be possible, perhaps also links to
dynamic demonstrations on a website. All chapters will be peer-reviewed and are expected to be of
very high quality (comparable to reviews in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Psychological Bulletin,
Annual Review of Psychology, Annual Review of Neuroscience, etc.).

All libraries from serious colleges, universities and research institutes who are active in the above
mentioned areas will need to buy the book. If the price setting is competitive, I also expect a good
number of individual academics (researchers and students) to buy the book. It will be a book one
must have on the shelve if one is working in this area. In addition, if the marketing is done right, it
should be possible to convince people in neighboring areas (like philosophy, visual arts, photography,
computer vision, web design, etc.) to have this handbook. I expect this handbook to yield similar
sales as other handbooks in this series (such as face perception, eye movements, numerical
cognition, etc.). Good conferences to reach the target audience are the meetings of the Psychonomic
Society, the Vision Science Society, the European Conference of Visual Perception, the European
Society for Cognitive Psychology, the Applied Vision Association (U.K.), the Experimental Psychology
Society (U.K.), the Association for Psychological Science, the Asia-Pacific Conference on Vision, and
the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness.
There are no other books on the market with the same aims & scope, wide coverage, and impressive
author list. Three books come somewhat close but fall short of this in some respect. Two edited
books from the early 1980s covered the resurging interest in perceptual organization around that
time (Beck, 1982; Kubovy & Pomerantz, 1981), but they mainly focused on an information-processing
framework and some debates about similarities and differences with the original Gestalt approach.
They were important at the time but the field has moved substantially forward in the three decades
that have passed since then. The book that is probably closest to what the current proposal aims to
achieve is an edited book which appeared almost ten years ago (Kimchi, Behrmann, & Olson, 2003).
Although this book covers a good range of topics and approaches, most of which we will cover too, it
is somewhat more restricted and, most importantly, it is much less comprehensive and systematic

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Market considerations

than the handbook I envisage. The book had a nice selection of excellent authors but it was
somewhat arbitrary, because it was based on the talks at the 31st Carnegie Symposium on Cognition
(June 2000). So, although we will definitely invite some of the authors who also had a chapter in that
book, our scope is much wider and our coverage more comprehensive.
Beck, J. (Ed.). (1982). Organization and representation in vision. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kubovy, M., & Pomerantz, J. R. (Eds.). (1981). Perceptual organization. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Kimchi, R., Behrmann, M., & Olson, C. R. (Eds.). (2003). Perceptual organization in vision: Behavioral and neural
perspectives. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

List of Contents
Section I: General Background
1. Historical and conceptual background: Gestalt theory (Johan Wagemans)
2. Philosophical background: Phenomenology (Liliana Albertazzi)
3. Methodological background: Experimental phenomenology (Jan Koenderink)
Section II: Perceptual Grouping
4. Traditional and new principles of perceptual grouping (Joseph L. Brooks)
5. Contour integration: psychophysical, neurophysiological and computational perspectives (Robert
Hess, Serge Dumoulin & Keith May)
6. Bridging the dimensional gap: Perceptual organization of contour in two-dimensional shape
(James H. Elder)
7. The neural mechanisms of figure-ground segregation (Matthew W. Self & Pieter R. Roelfsema)

8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

Low-level and high-level contributions to figure-ground organization (Mary A. Peterson)

Figures and holes (Marco Bertamini & Roberto Casati)
Perceptual completions (Robert J. van Lier & Walter Gerbino)
Ecological statistics of figure-ground cues (Charles Fowlkes & Jitendra Malik)
Neural mechanisms of figure-ground organization: Border-ownership, competition and switching
(Naoki Kogo & Raymond van Ee)

Section IV: Texture and Pattern Perception

13. Texture perception (Ruth Rosenholtz)
14. Statistical regularities (Steven Dakin)
15. Probabilistic models of features and objects (Jacob Feldman)
16. Symmetry perception (Peter A. van der Helm)
17. Hierarchical patterns (Ruth Kimchi)
Section V: Surface and Color Perception
18. The perceptual representation of transparency, lightness, and gloss (Bart Anderson)
19. Perceptual organization in lightness perception (Alan Gilchrist)
20. Achromatic transparency (Walter Gerbino)

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Section III: Figure-Ground Organization

21. Representing and estimating light fields in 3D scenes (Laurence T. Maloney, Minjung Kim & Gizem
Kucucoglu)
22. Lightness constancy, intrinsic images and shape estimation (Jonathan Barron & Jitendra Malik)
23. Perceptual organization and color appearance (Hannah Smithson)
Section VI: Form, Shape, Object and Face Perception
24. Visual representation of contour geometry (Manish Singh)
25. Emergent features and feature combination (James R. Pomerantz & Anna I. Cragin)
26. Hierarchical organization by and-or tree (Jungseock Joo, Shuo Wang & Song-Chun Zhu)
27. On the dynamic perceptual characteristics of Gestalten: theory-based methods (James T.
Townsend, Michael J. Wenger, & Arash Khodadadi)
28. Holistic face perception (Marlene Behrmann, Jennifer Richler & Galia Avidan)
Section VII: Motion and Event Perception
29. Apparent motion and reference frames (Michael Herzog & Haluk Ogmen)
30. Dynamic grouping motion: perceptual organization for 3-D objects (Howard S. Hock)
31. Perceptual organization and the aperture problem (Nicola Bruno & Marco Bertamini)
32. Stereokinetic effect, kinetic depth effect, and structure from motion (Stefano Vezzani, Peter
Kramer, & Paola Bressan)
33. Interactions of form and motion in the perception of moving objects (Christopher D. Blair, Peter U.
Tse,& Gideon P. Caplovitz)
34. Biological motion perception (Martin A. Giese)
35. Temporal organization of perception (Alex Holcombe)
36. Dynamic object interactions, events, causality, animacy (Brian Scholl)

37. Auditory perceptual organization (Sue Denham & Istvn Winkler)

38. Tactile and haptic perceptual organization (Astrid Kappers & Wouter Bergmann Tiest)
39. Olfactory perceptual organization (Jan Kroeze)
40. Cross-modal perceptual organization (Charles Spence)
41. Sensory substitution and the third kind of qualia (Noelle R. Stiles & Shinsuke Shimojo)
42. Two modes of visual processing: perception vs. action (Melvyn A. Goodale & Tzvi Ganel)
Section IX: Applications of Perceptual Organization
43. Perceptual organization in the animal kingdom: camouflage and segmentation (Daniel Osorio &
Innes C. Cuthill)
44. Perceptual organization and visual design (Gert J. van Tonder & Dhanraj Vishwanath)
45. Perceptual organization in visual art (Jan Koenderink)
46. Aesthetic preference and perceptual organization: the role of good fit (Stephen E. Palmer)
Section X: General Theoretical Issues
47. Development of perceptual organization in infancy (Paul C. Quinn & Ramesh S. Bhatt)

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Section VIII: Perceptual Organization in Other Modalities

48. Individual differences in local and global perceptual organization (Lee de-Wit & Johan Wagemans)
49. Perceptual organization and attention (Cline R. Gillebert Glyn W. Humphreys)
50. Perceptual organization and consciousness (Sam Schwarzkopf & Geraint Rees)
51. Binocular rivalry and perceptual ambiguity (David Alais & Randolph Blake)
52. Hierarchical stages or emergence in perceptual integration? (Cees van Leeuwen)
53. Cortical dynamics and oscillations: What controls what we see? (Cees van Leeuwen)
54. Bayesian models of perceptual organization (Jacob Feldman)
55. Simplicity in perceptual organization (Peter A. van der Helm)
56. Local and global influences on the Gestalt: A perspective from neuroscience (Steven Zucker)
57. Gestalts as ecological templates (Jan Koenderink)

Scientific Advisory Board

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Marlene Behrmann, CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.

Patrick Cavanagh, Paris, France, and Harvard, Boston, MA, U.S.A.
Walter Gerbino, Trieste, Italy
Glyn W. Humphreys, Oxford, U.K.
Stephen E. Palmer, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A.
Pieter Roelfsema, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

David Alais, Sydney, Australia and Randolph Blake, Vanderbilt, Nashville, TN, U.S.A. (51)
Liliana Albertazzi, Trento, Italy (2)
Bart Anderson, Sydney, Australia (18)
Marlene Behrmann, CMU, Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A., Jennifer Richler, Vanderbilt, Nashville, TN,
U.S.A. and Galia Avidan, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (28)
Marco Bertamini, Liverpool, U.K. and Roberto Casati, CNRS, Paris, France (9)
Paola Bressan, Stefano Vezzani, and Peter Kramer, University of Padova, Italy (32)
Joseph L. Brooks, UCL, U.K. (4)
Nicola Bruno, Parma, Italy and Marco Bertamini, Liverpool, U.K. (31)
Steven Dakin, UCL, London, U.K. (14)
Susan Denham, Plymouth, U.K. and Istvn Winkler, Szeged, Hungary (37)
Lee de-Wit and Johan Wagemans, Leuven, Belgium (48)
James Elder, Toronto, Canada (6)
Jacob Feldman, Rutgers, NJ, U.S.A. (15 and 54)
Walter Gerbino, Trieste, Italy (10 and 20)
Martin A. Giese, Tbingen, Germany (34)
Alan Gilchrist, Rutgers, NJ, U.S.A. (19)
Melvyn A. Goodale, Waterloo, Canada and Tzvi Ganel, Ben Gurion University, Israel (42)
Michael Herzog, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland and Haluk Ogmen, Houston, TX, U.S.A. (29)
Robert Hess, McGill, Montreal, Canada and Serge Dumoulin, Utrecht, The Netherlands and Keith
May, UCL, London, U.K. (5)
Howard S. Hock, Florida Atlantic University, FL, U.S.A. (30)

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization

Contributing Authors

Alex Holcombe, Sydney, Australia (35)

Glyn W. Humphreys and Cline R. Gillebert, Oxford, U.K. (49)
Astrid Kappers and Wouter Bergmann Tiest, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (38)
Ruth Kimchi, Haifa, Israel (17)
Jan J. Koenderink, Leuven, Belgium and Delft, The Netherlands (3, 45 and 57)
Naoki Kogo and Raymond van Ee, Leuven, Belgium (12)
Jan Kroeze, Utrecht, The Netherlands (39)
Jitendra Malik, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A. (11 and 22)
Laurence T. Maloney, NYU, U.S.A. (21)
Daniel Osorio, Sussex, U.K. and Innes C. Cuthill, Bristol, U.K. (43)
Stephen E. Palmer, Berkeley, CA, U.S.A. (46)
Mary A. Peterson, Tucson, AZ, U.S.A. (8)
James R. Pomerantz and Anna I. Cragin, Houston, TX, U.S.A. (25)
Paul C. Quinn and Ramesh S. Bhatt, Newark, DE, U.S.A. (47)
Geraint Rees and Sam Schwarzkopf, UCL, London, U.K. (50)
Pieter Roelfsema and M. W. Self , Amsterdam, The Netherlands (7)
Ruth Rosenholtz, M.I.T., MA, U.S.A. (13)
Brian J. Scholl, Yale, New Haven, CT, U.S.A. (36)
Shinsuke Shimojo & Noelle Stiles, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, U.S.A. (41)
Manish Singh, Rutgers, NJ, U.S.A. (24)
Hannah Smithson, Oxford, U.K. (23)
Charles Spence, Oxford, U.K. (40)
James T. Townsend and colleagues, Indiana, Bloomington, IN, U.S.A. (27)
Peter U. Tse and colleagues, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, U.S.A. (33)
Peter A. van der Helm, Leuven, Belgium (16 and 55)
Cees van Leeuwen, Leuven, Belgium (52 and 53)
Robert J. van Lier, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and Walter Gerbino, Trieste, Italy (10)
Gert J. van Tonder, Kyoto, Japan and Dhanraj Vishwanath, St. Andrews, Scotland, U.K. (44)
Johan Wagemans, Leuven, Belgium (1 and 48)
Song-Chun Zhu and colleagues, UCLA, LA, U.S.A. (26)
Steven Zucker, Yale, New Haven, CT, U.S.A. (56)

Outline Proposal: Handbook of Perceptual Organization