Visual structure and the integration of form and color information

Recent evidence challenges the view that attention acts on the outputs of e arly filters dedicated to processing motion, color, and orientation. Instea d, "proto-objects" specified by shading, depth, direction of lighting, and surface information are thought to provide input to attentional processing. These findings are extended here to the parsing of occlusion-based contour s. Multicolored occlusion structures were briefly presented and illusory co njunctions measured. More illusory conjunctions were made to structures in which color was inconsistent with form information, a result that can be ex plained by a property of the visual system that biases the integration of c olor to be consistent with form. Results show that this constraint was base d on global structural descriptions rather than the local information provi ded by T-junctions and collinearity. Together, these results offer a new to ol for the study of the binding problem in vision.