ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces a new illusion, phantom induced blindness in which high intensity yellow dots placed on the stationary inducing gratings perceptually disappear when the phantom gratings are perceived. It shows that both moving and stationary visual phantoms can be induced by second-order components and robust against the luminance change of the occluder. The chapter proposes a two-stage model and discusses visual phantoms from the viewpoint of Naomi Weisstein's neural symbolic activity hypothesis. It describes the phenomenon of surface completion as a modification of early visual processing activities based on perceptual processing of overall configuration. The chapter shows that a similar disappearance phenomenon occurs in the visual phantom illusion. It examines the difference between the phantom and the grating induction effects to the classification of transparency. Weisstein has vigorously applied psychophysical measurements, such as differential adaptation or masking, to the investigation of higher-order perceptual processes including surface completion, three-dimensional object perception, and figure-ground organization.
