ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2012
Production and perception rules underlying visual patterns: effects of symmetry and hierarchy.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 papers.
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Who cites it
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- Can neural networks model the human perception of geometric shapes?PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Traces of Intentionality: Balance, Complexity, and Organization in Artworks by Humans and Apes.Topics in cognitive science · 2026Article
- Visual sensitivity to irregularities in periodic tiling patterns.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Crows recognize geometric regularity.Science advances · 2025Article
- Origins of Hierarchical Logical Reasoning.Cognitive science · 2023Article
- Seven-month-old infants detect symmetrical structures in multi-featured abstract visual patterns.PloS one · 2022Article
- Sensitivity to geometric shape regularity in humans and baboons: A putative signature of human singularity.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Rotational-symmetry in a 3D scene and its 2D image.Journal of mathematical psychology · 2018Article
- Production of Supra-regular Spatial Sequences by Macaque Monkeys.Current biology : CB · 2018Article
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- The language of geometry: Fast comprehension of geometrical primitives and rules in human adults and preschoolers.PLoS computational biology · 2017Article
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- Fluency Expresses Implicit Knowledge of Tonal Symmetry.Frontiers in psychology · 2016Article
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- Non-adjacent visual dependency learning in chimpanzees.Animal cognition · 2015Article
- Spatial analysis of "crazy quilts", a class of potentially random aesthetic artefacts.PloS one · 2013Article
- Pattern perception and computational complexity: introduction to the special issue.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Article
- Artificial grammar learning meets formal language theory: an overview.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2012Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Formal language theory has been extended to two-dimensional patterns, but little is known about two-dimensional pattern perception. We first examined spontaneous two-dimensional visual pattern production by humans, gathered using a novel touch screen approach. Both spontaneous creative production and subsequent aesthetic ratings show that humans prefer ordered, symmetrical patterns over random patterns. We then further explored pattern-parsing abilities in different human groups, and compared them with pigeons. We generated visual plane patterns based on rules varying in complexity. All human groups tested, including children and individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), were able to detect violations of all production rules tested. Our ASD participants detected pattern violations with the same speed and accuracy as matched controls. Children's ability to detect violations of a relatively complex rotational rule correlated with age, whereas their ability to detect violations of a simple translational rule did not. By contrast, even with extensive training, pigeons were unable to detect orientation-based structural violations, suggesting that, unlike humans, they did not learn the underlying structural rules. Visual two-dimensional patterns offer a promising new formally-grounded way to investigate pattern production and perception in general, widely applicable across species and age groups.
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