Figure 3.

Example and counterexample stimuli for the trend towards lower identifiability for stimuli with very small numbers of interior elements, which according to the final model was stronger for smaller numbers of contour elements. Identification rates for outlines are taken from Wagemans et al (2008). Identification rates shown for Gabor arrays are averaged across all Gabor versions (RCR version depicted here). The group of stimuli with small numbers of both interior and contour elements is similar to, and partially overlaps with, the group of stimuli with small mean path angles (see figure 2). Crucial small-scale information is affected in number 237 ‘toothbrush’ (top left) as in many of these stimuli, but number 16 ‘banana’ (bottom left) provides another example of large-scale diagnostic information enabling identification. Contours consisting of larger numbers of elements can be strongly diagnostic regardless of small numbers of interior elements (number 209 ‘snake’, bottom right), and appear to run into identification problems mainly when the underlying outline is sharply curved to such an extent that large amounts of shape information are lost in the Gabor arrays (number 65 ‘comb’, top right).