THE TEXTURE LEXICON - UNDERSTANDING THE CATEGORIZATION OF VISUAL TEXTURE TERMS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO TEXTURE IMAGES

In this paper we present the results of two experiments. The first is on the categorization of texture words in the English language. The go al was to determine whether there is a common basis for subjects' grou pings of words related to visual texture, and if so, to identify the u nderlying dimensions used to categorize those words. Eleven major clus ters were identified through hierarchical cluster analysis, ranging fr om 'random' to 'repetitive'. These clusters remained intact in a multi dimensional scaling solution. The stress for a three-dimensional solut ion obtained through multidimensional scaling was 0.18, meaning that 8 2% of the variance in the data is explained through the use of three d imensions. It appears that the major dimensions of texture descriptors are repetitive versus nonrepetitive; linearly oriented versus circula rly oriented; and simple versus complex. In the second experiment we m easured the strength of association between texture words and texture images. The goal was to determine whether there is any systematic corr espondence between the domains of texture words and texture images. Pe arson's coefficient of contingency, a measure of the strength of assoc iation, was found to be 0.63 for words corresponding to given images a nd 0.56 for images corresponding to given words. Thus the texture cate gories in the verbal space and those in the visual space are strongly tied. In sum, our two experiments show (a) that despite the tremendous variety in the words we have to describe textures, there is an underl ying structure to the lexical space which can be derived from the expe rimental data; and (b) that the association between a category of word s and a category of images was strongest when both categories represen t the same underlying property. This suggests that subjects' organizat ions of texture terms are systematically tied to their organization of texture images.