Detection of compound spatial patterns: further evidence for different channel interactions

Abstract.

It is shown that contrast interrelation functions for small compound gratings and for small compound edge-type patterns have different shapes: the former are lozenges, the latter ellipses in the normalised contrast space. These findings can be described by a simple p-norm model, comprising one channel which is most sensitive to the first pattern, another channel which is most sensitive to the second pattern and a non-linear summation of the channel outputs. Since the value of the summation exponent p is constant within but varies between pattern classes, an interpretation of the model parameters is limited to pattern class. Channel models based on the p-norm are discussed, taking into account the interpretation of the first derivative of the contrast interrelation function and the summation exponent, p.