1School of Information Science, Yunnan University, Kunming, 650092, China
2Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, 650223, China
3Department of Psychology, Giessen University, Giessen, 35390, Germany
4Department of Cognitive Sciences, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, 92602, USA
5School of Information Science and Technology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

Abstract 

Closure or the presence of a “hole” is an emergent perceptual feature that can be extracted by the visual system early on. This feature has been shown to have perceptual advantages over openness or “no-hole”. In this study, we investigated when and how the human brain differentiates between “hole” and “no-hole” figures. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a passive observation paradigm. Two pairs of simple figures (Experiment 1) and two sets of Greek letters (Experiment 2) were used as stimuli. The ERPs of “hole” and “no-hole” figures differed ～90 ms after stimulus onset: “hole” figures elicited smaller P1 and N1 amplitudes than “no-hole” figures. These suggest that both P1 and N1 components are sensitive to the difference between “hole” and “no-hole” figures; perception of “hole” and “no-hole” figures might be differentiated early during visual processing.

Keywords

closure; “hole” stimuli; event-related potentials; P1; N1

[SpringerLink]