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Human Perception
 The International Library of Psychology
Series Editor: David Canter

Titles in the Series:

Human Perception
Marco Bertamini and Michael Kubovy

Environmental Psychology
David Canter, Terry Hartig and
Mirilia Bonnes

Hypnosis
Michael Heap and Irving Kirsch

Counseling Psychology
Frederick Leong

Psychology and Law:

Criminal and Civil Perspectives
Ronald Roesch

Psychology and Law:

Clinical Forensic Perspectives
Ronald Roesch

Psychology and Law:

Criminal and Civil Perspectives
Ronald Roesch

Parapsychology
Richard Wiseman and Caroline Watt

History of Psychology Revisited

William Woodward and Sandy Lovie
Human Perception

Edited by

Marco Bertamini
University of Liverpool

Michael Kubovy
University of Virginia, USA

~~ ~~o~;~~n~~;up
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2006 Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© Marco Bertamini and Michael Kubovy 2006. For copyright of individual articles please
refer to the Acknowledgements.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2006929149

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Publisher’s Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that
some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence
from those they have been unable to contact.

ISBN 13: 978-0-815-38954-5 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-351-15628-8 (ebk)
Contents

Acknowledgements vii
Series Preface IX

Introduction xi

PART I ATTENTION

Anne M. Treisman and Garry Gelade (1980), 'A Feature-Integration Theory of

Attention', Cognitive Psychology, 12, pp. 97-136. 3
2 Michael I. Posner, Charles R.R. Snyder and Brian J. Davidson (1980), 'Attention
and the Detection of Signals', Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 109,
pp. 160-74. 43
3 Steven Yantis and John Jon ides ( 1990), 'Abrupt Visual Onsets and Selective
Attention: Voluntary Versus Automatic Allocation', Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16, pp. 121-34. 59
4 Jeremy M. Wolfe and Todd S. Horowitz (2004), 'What Attributes Guide the
Deployment of Visual Attention and How do they do it?', Nature Reviews:
Neuroscience, 5, pp. 1-7. 73

PART II BRAIN SYSTEMS

5 Bruno G. Breitmeyer and Leo Ganz (1976), 'Implications of Sustained

and Transient Channels for Theories of Visual Pattern Masking, Saccadic
Suppression, and Information Processing', Psychological Review, 83, pp. 1-36. 83
6 Nikos K. Logothetis and Jeffrey D. Schall (1989), 'Neuronal Correlates of
Subjective Visual-Perception', Science, 245, pp. 761-63. 119
7 Melvyn A. Goodale and A. David Milner (1992), 'Separate Visual Pathways for
Perception and Action', Trends in Neurosciences, 15, pp. 20-25. 123

PART III OBJECT INTERPOLATION AND COMPLETION

8 Gaetano Kanizsa (1976), 'Subjective Contours', Scientific American, 234,

pp.48-52. 131
9 Philip J. Kellman and Thomas F. Shipley (1992), 'Perceiving Objects Across
Gaps in Space and Time', Current Directions in Psychological Science, 1,
pp. 193-99. 137
vi Human Perception

10 Renee Baillargeon (2004), 'Infants' Physical World', Current Directions in

Psychological Science, 13, pp. 89-94. 145

PART IV OBJECT RECOGNITION AND CLASSIFICATION

11 Barbara Tversky and Kathleen Hemenway (1984), 'Objects, Parts, and

Categories', Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, pp. I 69-93. I 53
12 D.O. Hoffman and W.A. Richards (1984), 'Parts of Recognition', Cognition, 18,
pp. 65-96. 179
13 Irving Biederman (1987), 'Recognition-by-Components: A Theory of Human
Image Understanding', Psychological Review, 94, pp. 115--47. 21 I

PART V DIFFERENT TYPES OF OBJECTS

14 Martha J. Farah, Kevin D. Wilson, Maxwell Drain and James N. Tanaka (1998),
'What is "Special" about Face Perception?', Psychological Review, 105,
pp. 482-98. 247
15 Daniel Kahneman, Anne Treisman and Brian J. Gibbs (1992), 'The Reviewing of
Object Files: Object-Specific Integration of Information', Cognitive Psychology,
24, pp. 175-219. 265
16 Michael Kubovy and David VanValkenburg (2001), 'Auditory and Visual
Objects', Cognition, 80, pp. 97-126. 311
17 Marco Bertamini and Camilla J. Croucher (2003), 'The Shape of Holes',
Cognition, 87, pp. 33-54. 341

PART VI INFORMATION PROCESSING AND MODELS

18 Saul Sternberg (1969), 'The Discovery of Processing Stages: Extensions of

Donders' Method', Acta Psychologica, 30, pp. 276-315. 365
19 RogerN. Shepard (1984), 'Ecological Constraints on Internal Representation:
Resonant Kinematics of Perceiving, Imagining, Thinking, and Dreaming',
Psychological Review, 91, pp. 4 I 7--47. 405
20 Stephen Grossberg and Ennio Mingo II a (1985), 'Neural Dynamics of Perceptual
Grouping: Textures, Boundaries, and Emergent Segmentations', Perception and
Psychophysics, 38, pp. 141-71. 437
21 Steven P. Tipper (I 985), 'The Negative Priming Effect: Inhibitory Priming by
Ignored Objects', Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37,
pp. 571-90. 469

N arne Index 489

Acknowledgements

The editors and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to use copyright
material.

American Associaton for the Advancement of Science for the essay: Nikos K. Logothetis
and Jeffrey D. Schall (1989), 'Neuronal Correlates of Subjective Visual-Perception', Science,
245, pp. 761-63. Copyright© 1989 AAAS.

American Psychological Association for the essays: Michael I. Posner, Charles R.R. Snyder and
Brian J. Davidson (1980), 'Attention and the Detection of Signals', Journal of Experimental
Psychology: General, 109, pp. 160-74. Copyright© 1980 by the American Psychological
Association. Reprinted with permission; Steven Yantis and John Jon ides (1990), 'Abrupt
Visual Onsets and Selective Attention: Voluntary Versus Automatic Allocation', Journal of
Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16, pp. 121-34. Copyright
© 1990 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission; Bruno G.
Breitmeyer and Leo Ganz (1976), 'Implications of Sustained and Transient Channels for
Theories of Visual Pattern Masking, Saccadic Suppression, and Information Processing',
Psychological Review, 83, pp. 1-36. Copyright © 1976 by the American Psychological
Association. Reprinted with permission; Barbara Tversky and Kathleen Hemenway ( 1984),
'Objects, Parts, and Categories', Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113, pp. 169-
93. Copyright© 1984 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission;
Martha J. Farah, Kevin D. Wilson, Maxwell Drain and James N. Tanaka (1998), 'What is
"Special" about Face Perception?', Psychological Review, 105, pp. 482-98. Copyright© 1998
by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission; Daniel Kahneman,
Anne Treisman and Brian J. Gibbs (1992), 'The Reviewing of Object Files: Object-Specific
Integration of Information', Cognitive Psychology, 24, pp. 175-219. Copyright© 1992 by the
American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission; Roger N. Shepard (1984),
'Ecological Constraints on Internal Representation: Resonant Kinematics of Perceiving,
Imagining, Thinking, and Dreaming', Psychological Review, 91, pp. 417--47. Copyright©
1984 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted with permission.

Blackwell Publishing for the essays: Philip J. Kellman and Thomas F. Shipley (1992),
'Perceiving Objects Across Gaps in Space and Time', Current Directions in Psychological
Science, 1, pp. 193-99; Renee Baillargeon (2004), 'Infants' Physical World', Current
Directions in Psychological Science, 13, pp. 89-94; Saul Sternberg (1969), 'The Discovery of
Processing Stages: Extensions ofDonders' Method', Acta Psychologica, 30, pp. 276-315.

Copyright Clearance Center for the essay: Jeremy M. Wolfe and Todd S. Horowitz (2004),
'What Attributes Guide the Deployment of Visual Attention and How do they do it?', Nature
Reviews: Neuroscience, 5, pp. 1-7.
viii Human Perception

Elsevier for the essays: Anne M. Treisman and Garry Gelade (1980), 'A Feature-Integration
Theory ofAttention', Cognitive Psychology, 12, pp. 97- I 36. Copyright© 1980 with permission
from Elsevier; Melvyn A. Goodale and A. David Milner (1992), 'Separate Visual Pathways
for Perception and Action', Trends in Neurosciences, 15, pp. 20-25. Copyright © 1992 with
permission from Elsevier; D.O. Hoffman and W.A. Richards (I 984), 'Parts of Recognition',
Cognition, 18, pp. 65-96. Copyright© 1984 with permission from Elsevier; Michael Kubovy
and David VanValkenburg (2001), 'Auditory and Visual Objects', Cognition, 80, pp. 97-126.
Copyright© 200 I with permission from Elsevier; Marco Bertamini and Camilla J. Croucher
(2003), 'The Shape of Holes', Cognition, 87, pp. 33-54. Copyright© 2003 with permission
of Elsevier.

Taylor & Francis Ltd for the essay: 'Steven P. Tipper (1985), The Negative Priming Effect:
Inhibitory Priming by Ignored Objects', Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37,
pp. 571-90. http://www.tandt.co.uk/journals.

Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently
overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first
opportunity.
Series Preface

Psychology now touches every corner of our lives. No serious consideration of any
newsworthy topic, from eating disorders to crime, from terrorism to new age beliefs, from
trauma to happiness, is complete without some examination of what systematic, scientific
psychology has to say on these matters. This means that psychology now runs the gamut from
neuroscience to sociology, by way of medicine and anthropology, geography and molecular
biology, connecting to virtually every area of scientific and professional life. This diversity
produces a vibrant and rich discipline in which every area of activity finds outlets across a
broad spectrum ofpublications.
Those who wish to gain an understanding of any area of psychology therefore either have
to rely on secondary sources or, if they want to connect with the original contributions that
define any domain of the discipline, must hunt through many areas of the library, often under
diverse headings.
The volumes in this series obviate those difficulties by bringing together under one set of
covers, carefully selected existing publications that are the definitive papers that characterize
a specific topic in psychology.
The editors for each volume have been chosen because they are internationally recognized
authorities. Therefore the selection of each editor, and the way in which it is organized into
discrete sections, is an important statement about the field.
Each volume of the International Library of Psychology thus collects in one place the
seminal and definitive journal articles that are creating current understanding of a specific
aspect of present-day psychology. As a resource for study and research the volumes ensure
that scholars and other professionals can gain ready access to original source material. As a
statement of the essence of the topic covered they provide a benchmark for understanding and
evaluating that aspect of psychology.
As this International Library emerges over the coming years it will help to specify what the
nature of21st century psychology is and what its contribution is to the future of humanity.

DAVID CANTER
Series Editor
Professor of Psychology
University of Liverpool, UK
Introduction

If we think about it, we have no difficulty in appreciating that our senses provide a great
amount of information about the world around us. But our senses are not something we can
control the way we control a camera. With a camera in our hands we can decide if and when
to take a snapshot. Our experience of the world on the other hand is constantly based on the
activity of our senses, both at a conscious and a subconscious level. On the one hand, to see,
hear, taste, smell and feel is to be alive. On the other hand, it is probably because perception
is a constant aspect of our life that we can take it for granted. It is effortless for us to gather
information by means of our senses but it would be a mistake to take this lack of effort as a
sign that perception is simple.
One consequence of the fact that we take perception for granted is that its study did not
progress at a fast pace during the history of science. For instance, the idea that we see thanks
to the extramission of rays from our eyes was held by Empedocles, Plato and even Euclid, and
was not clearly rejected until Alahzen (965-1 040). We have to wait for the middle of the I 9th
century for the oldest quantitative law in perception (and also in psychology). This is known
as Fechner's law, and it describes the relationship between the intensity of a physical stimulus
and its perceptual effect.
It was only in the 20th century, and after the establishment of psychology as a scientific
discipline, that the study of perception flourished. But it would be a mistake to think that
perception as a subject is the reserve of psychologists. In this book we offer a selection
of contributions that cover some of the most interesting discoveries and theories. More
importantly, the book tries to give a flavour of the different approaches and ideas.
It is a challenge to collect important contributions to human perception. The main reason
is that the study of perception is shared by many disciplines. Because we are cognitive
psychologists, we have confined our selection to publications by cognitive psychologists. The
cognitive approach is dominant in psychology today and has been very successful in its study
of perception, attention and human information processing. Even so, the body of work is huge.
To ease our task, we started with a list of the most frequently cited essays in the major journals
of our discipline. The lSI Web of Science® is a bibliographic search tool that accesses the lSI
citation databases. It allowed us to access information gathered from thousands of scholarly
journals (for more information, see <http://www. isinet.com/> ).
We selected the following psychology journals: Behavioral and Brain Sciences,
Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Review, Journal ofExperimental Psychology: General,
Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, Psychological Science, Journal ofExperimental Psychology:
Human Perception and Performance, Perception and Psychophysics, Acta Psychologica,
Perception, Visual Cognition and Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human
Experimental Psychology. To these, we added essays on human perception published in
Science and Nature.
Citation indices and the associated impact factors are helpful but they must be used with
care. There is a debate about the use and abuse of the lSI impact factor as a measure of
xii Human Perception

the quality of a journal, its research essays, and the researchers who wrote those essays.
Because comparing average numbers of citations across different subject areas is fraught
with problems, one would like to make such comparisons within subject areas. Yet, it is not
always easy to determine where an area ends and another begins. Furthermore, a scholar who
wishes to index influence by citation frequency may overestimate the scientific importance
of an essay because of a snowball effect that makes some essays on a popular topic take off
and multiply their citations. On the other hand, some seminal contributions to the field may
have been absorbed without generating a great amount of data or debate, and therefore do not
appear at the top of a most cited list.
We began by compiling a database of the most cited essays in human perception. We ranked
them by average number of citations per year. In keeping with our skepticism, we used the
resulting list only as a guide and not prescriptively. The selection was compiled in October
2004; it is a snapshot at that particular time because any citation ranking changes slowly but
continuously (for more information, see <http://www.liv.ac.uk/vp/marco.html>).
For those interested in the most influential publications in cognitive science (many of them
relevant to human perception), we recommend consulting the Millennium Project by the
University of Minnesota. It is a list of the I 00 most influential works in cognitive science from
the 20th century, starting from nominations on their website. The final list of publications
includes comments about what makes them important (for more information, see <http://
www.cogsci. umn.edu/0 LD/calendar/past_events/mi llennium/home.htm I>).
Our citation analysis was only the first step in the selection process. Some ofthe essays we
have chosen are drawn from our list of highly cited essays, some from more recent publications
for which no clear pattern of citations is yet available, and some from review essays. To
maintain the book's balance we decided to organize the book into six parts covering the six
topics:

I Attention
II Brain Systems
III Object Interpolation and Completion
IV Object Recognition and Classification
V Different Types of Objects
VI Information Processing and Models.

Part I 'Attention', opens with a classic essay by Anne Treisman and Garry Gelade (Chapter
1), which is at the top of the most cited list. Treisman and Gelade's essay has been cited on
average 87.5 times every year since it was published. The problem of searching for an item in
a crowded scene had been studied before, but Treisman provided an elegant explanation for
why an item sometimes pops out and at other times we need to scan every item in turn. Some
so-called basic features are processed in parallel pre-attentively, but attention is required to
bind features together. The idea is that attention operates serially; meaning that if a basic
feature does not define a target, the task will require a serial, self-terminating search. One
might say that this idea of a detailed inspection of one item at a time made the concept of
attention more concrete. Although the feature integration theory has since been criticized and
updated, this has been an evolution from a solid start and its continuous development is one
reason why so many essays still cite Treisman's work. For instance, another highly cited essay,
 Human Perception xiii

(Wolfe, Cave and Franzel, 1989) provides an alternative (albeit a closely related alternative)
to feature integration theory. Instead of including this and other essays from this literature,
we chose to include a more recent essay by Jeremy Wolfe and Todd Horowitz (Chapter 4) to
provide an up-to-date review.
Part I includes two other essays, both on attention cueing. The essay by Michael Posner,
Charles Snyder and Brian Davidson (Chapter 2) is a classic study of how attention can be
deployed. It has been cited 35.1 times per year since publication. In their essay, Steven Yantis
and John Jonides (Chapter 3) have suggested that new perceptual objects have high priority
for visually guided behaviour. This essay is also among the most cited papers in our list, with
an average of23.0 citations per year.
Part II 'Brain Systems', is slightly different from the other parts. We thought it useful
to include essays that show how behaviour is best understood by linking the behavioural
findings to our knowledge of the brain. In particular, it is important to know that the visual
system contains distinct parallel channels. Starting as early as the ganglion cells of the retina
we find classes of cells with important physiological and functional differences. Bruno
Breitmeyer and Leo Ganz (Chapter 5) argue that the interactions between transient and
sustained pathways provide a basis for better understanding visual masking, iconic memory,
motion and pattern perception. Of the many essays written by Mel Goodale and David Milner,
we chose a short review one (Chapter 7). Their work on the two separate pathways (the what
and the how pathways) is an elegant synthesis of clinical, physiological and behavioural data.
For those interested in this area we also recommend other books by the same authors (Milner
and Goodale, 1995; and Goodale and Milner, 2003). We include an essay by Nikos Logothetis
and Jeff Schall (Chapter 6) illustrating an important neural correlate of perception.
Our experience of the visual world is much richer than the metaphor of a camera would
suggest. For instance, subjective contours and amodal completion testify to that. This is the
topic of Part Ill 'Object Interpolation and Completion'. Gaetano Kanizsa (Chapter 8) was a
pioneer in the study of both. A modal completion refers to the fact that objects partly occluded
retain (at one level) their perceived completeness. Subjective contours refer to perceived
contours in the absence of local visual stimulation. In both cases the visual system seems to go
beyond the information available in the image. Kanizsa is also the author of several books (for
the most influential of these see Kanizsa, 1979). The essay by Phillip Kellman and Thomas
Shipley (Chapter 9) reviews their work on boundary interpolation. Surprisingly, the visual
world of infants, less than one year old, has been shown to be rich in assumptions about the
physical world such as the fact that objects are solid and they do not go out of existence when
occluded. Since we could only fit one developmental essay into the book, we chose a recent
review essay by Renee Baillargeon (Chapter 10) to provide an up-to-date summary.
A key question in perception is, 'How do people recognize and classify objects?' In Part IV
'Object Recognition and Classification', we include an essay by Barbara Tversky and Kathy
Hemenway (Chapter 11), in which they observe how, at the basic level, one kind of feature in
particular proliferates, namely, parts. However, what parts are exactly is a critical issue, and
how the visual system finds parts from visual information is challenging. One hypothesis is
that the visual system uses a set of volume primitives. (For probably the most influential essay
on volume primitives see David Marr and Keith Nishihara, 1978). We did not include it in
this book because the key idea is also summarized in the essay by Irving Biederman (Chapter
13).
xiv Human Perception

In our list based on number of citations, lrv Biederman's essay was the next most cited
after that of Treisman and Gelade. It has been cited on average 64.3 times every year since
it was published. As already mentioned, the idea that the representation of shapes is based
on their structure, and in particular their part-structure, has a long history. Yet, Biederman's
essay was an important turning point because not only did it provide a clear description of
what the nature of parts are, but also why they are important. There is an analogy between
object recognition and speech perception in that a small number of phonemes (geons) are
combined using organizational rules to produce an unbounded set of different words (objects).
The importance of parts comes from the fact that they are derived from contrasts of five
edge cues in a two-dimensional image: curvature, collinearity, symmetry, parallelism and
co-termination. What is important here is that this information is present in the image and
invariant over viewing position. The debate in this literature has been robust, especially on
the issue of how much view independent object recognition really is. We wish we could
have included some of the highly cited papers that present a different view from Biederman's
(Michael Tarr and Steven Pinker, 1989; Tarr and Heinrich Bulthoff, I 995).
Volume primitives are one attractive solution to how human observers parse an object into
parts. However, other authors have developed a more bottom-up approach to part parsing.
On the grounds of differential geometry, Donald Hoffman and Whitman Richards (Chapter
12) have suggested that there is information along the contour which is useful in segmenting
a shape into subparts. This work builds on earlier suggestions, (eg Fred Attneave, 1954),
that curvature, and in particular locations of high curvature along a contour, are critically
important in describing the perceived three-dimensional shape. Hoffman and Richards' essay
combined an elegant mathematical analysis with a specific proposal, known as the minima
rule that says that minima of curvature (concave extrema) are likely to signal the boundary
between parts. Jan Koenderink published an essay in the same year that also deals with how
contour information is related to solid shape (Koenderink, 1984). Much empirical work was
inspired by these theories.
Part V 'Different Types of Objects', is probably more heterogeneous than the other parts.
Here we deal with some important issues, like what is special about visual information of faces
in an essay by Martha Farah and collaborators (Chapter 14). The authors propose that faces
are unlike other objects because of relatively less part-based shape representation for faces. In
other words, faces are always recognized holistically. Daniel Kahneman, Anne Treisman and
Brian Gibbs (Chapter 15) deal with the question of how information about visual objects is
stored and used. Using a priming paradigm, they found an object-specific advantage: naming
is facilitated by a preview of the target if the two appearances are linked to the same object. An
object file is a temporary episodic representation, within which successive states of an object
are linked and integrated. This essay has inspired much empirical investigation and helped
frame our view of what a perceptual object is.
Michael Kubovy and David Van Val ken burg (Chapter I 6) propose a cross-modal concept
of objecthood that focuses on the similarities between modalities. They also propose that
the auditory system might consist of two parallel streams of processing (the what and where
subsystems). These are analogous to the visual subsystems that were mentioned earlier (see
Goodale and Milner, Chapter 7).
The final essay in Part V, by Marco Bertamini and Camillla Croucher (Chapter I 7), is
closely linked to the topic of perceived part structure, and in particular, the work by Hoffman
 Human Perception XV

and Richards discussed earlier. To study perceived parts Bertamini and Croucher have chosen
a type of stimulus that turns out to be uniquely useful: visual holes. Even though an object
and a hole can have an identical contour, the fact that the contour is always assigned to only
one side (it describes the figure but not the ground) means that they are perceived as having a
different shape. The authors have confirmed a qualitative difference in how human observers
perceive objects and holes.
Part VI 'Information Processing and Models', includes some essays of great theoretical
impact. The oldest is by Saul Sternberg (Chapter I 8). Since publication it has been cited an
average of 38.26 times per year. Complex tasks can be broken down into a series of distinct
stages. If one believes that these stages are sequential, early stages must begin before later
stages. This is a useful assumption; from it, it is possible to derive discrete processing models
in which information is passed from one stage to the next when processing at the earlier stage
is completed.
We could have included in this book several essays by Roger Shepard. We did not include
Shepard (1962), only because it combines issues of learning with issues of perception. The
essay we did include (Chapter 19) also crosses boundaries. It concerns the concept of internal
representation, bringing cognitive science, ecology, evolutionary theory and measurement
theory together. Shepard's argument is that mental representations have internalized relations
of the physical world that have proven useful to the human species through evolution. Those
interested in the legacy of Shepard's ideas should also consider finding the 2001 special issue
of the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, entirely dedicated to this topic.
We decided to include an essay by Stephen Grossberg and Ennio Mingolla (Chapter 20)
because it is an example of a model that combines behavioural data with a detailed model
of information processing in the brain. This model may not be perfect but is one of the most
sophisticated and detailed available, and it builds on a large number of empirical findings.
The final essay, by Steven Tipper (Chapter 2 I), takes us back full circle to the topic of Part
I, that of attention. The paradigm of negative priming it describes is original: things that have
been ignored previously are more difficult to identify than those that were not.
With this selection, we make no claim of exhaustiveness (exhaustion comes closer to
describe the criterion used). Human perception is a vast ocean that scientists are still exploring.
Some technological advances in recent years have allowed us to get deeper, for instance the
advent of new imaging techniques. Different disciplines are coming together more and more
in new and exciting ways. At the same time, there is still plenty of uncharted territory. This
book combines a selection of classic essays with some more recent review essays on key
topics. Because of this, we hope it will suit both experienced researchers and those new to
the area.

References

Attneave, Fred (1954), 'Some Informational Aspects ofVisual Perception', Psychological Review, 61,
pp. 183-93.
Baillargeon, Renee (2004), 'Infants' Physical World', Current Directions in Psychological Science, 13,
pp. 89-94.
Bertamini, Marco and Croucher, Camilla (2003), 'The Shape of Holes', Cognition, 87, pp. 33-54.
xvi Human Perception

Biederman, Irving ( 1987), 'Recognition by Components- A Theory of Human Image Understanding',

Psychological Review, 94, pp. 115-47.
Breitmeyer, Bruno and Ganz, Leo ( 1976), 'Implications of Sustained and Transient Channels for Theories
of Visual-Pattern Masking, Saccadic Suppression, and Information-Processing', Psychological
Review, 83, pp. l-36.
Farah, Martha, Wilson, Kevin D., Drain, Maxwell and Tanaka, James N. ( 1998), 'What is ''Special"
About Face Perception?', Psychological Review, 105, pp. 3; 482-98.
Goodale, Mel and Milner, David ( 1992), 'Separate Visual Pathways for Perception and Action', Trends
in Neuroscience, 1, pp. 20-25.
Goodale, Mel and Milner, David (2003), Sight Unseen, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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 Part I
Attention
 [1]
A Feature-Integration Theory of Attention
ANNE M. TREISMAN
Uni1·ersity of British Columbia
AND
GARRY GELADE
Oxford University

A new hypothesis about the role of focused attention is proposed. The

feature-integration theory of attention suggests that attention must be directed
serially to each stimulus in a display whenever conjunctions of more than one
separable feature are needed to characterize or distinguish the possible objects
presented. A number of predictions were tested in a variety of paradigms includ-
ing visual search, texture segregation, identification and localization, and using
both separable dimensions (shape and color) and local elements or parts of figures
(lines, curves, etc. in letters) as the features to be integrated into complex wholes.
The results were in general consistent with the hypothesis. They offer a new set of
criteria for distinguishing separable from integral features and a new rationale for
predicting which tasks will show attention limits and which will not.

When we open our eyes on a familiar scene, we form an immediate

impression of recognizable objects, organized coherently in a spatial
framework. Analysis of our experience into more elementary sensations
is difficult, and appears subjectively to require an unusual type of per-
ceptual activity. In contrast, the physiological evidence suggests that the
visual scene is analyzed at an early stage by specialized populations of
receptors that respond selectively to such properties as orientation, color,
spatial frequency, or movement, and map these properties in different
areas of the brain (Zeki, 1976). The controversy between analytic and
synthetic theories_ of perception goes back many years: the As-
sociationists asserted that the experience of complex wholes is built by
combining more elementary sensations, while the Gestalt psychologists
claimed that the whole precedes its parts, that we initially register unitary
objects and relationships, and only later, if necessary, analyze these ob-
jects into their component parts or properties. This view is still active now
(e.g., Monahan & Lockhead, 1977; Neisser, 1976).
The Gestalt belief surely conforms to the normal subjective experience

Address reprint requests to Anne Treisman, Department of Psychology, University of

British Columbia, 2075 Wesbrook Mall, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1W5, Canada. We are grate-
ful to the British Medical Research Council, the Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineer-
ing Research Council, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences,
Stanford, California, and the Spencer Foundation for financial support, to Melanie Meyer,
Martha Nagle, and Wendy Kellogg of the University of Santa Cruz for running four of the
subjects in Experiment V, and to Daniel Kahneman for many helpful comments and
suggestions.
4 Human Perception

98 TREISMAN AND GELADE

of perception. However the immediacy and directness of an impression

are no guarantee that it reflects an early stage of information processing in
the nervous system. It is logically possible that we become aware only of
the final outcome of a complicated sequence of prior operations. "Top-
down" processing may describe what we consciously experience; as a
theory about perceptual coding it needs more objective support (Treis-
man, 1979).
We have recently proposed a new account of attention which assumes
that features come first in perception (Treisman, Sykes, & Gelade, 1977).
In our model, which we call the feature-integration theory of attention,
features are registered early, automatically, and in parallel across the
visual field, while objects are identified separately and only at a later
stage, which requires focused attention. We assume that the visual scene
is initially coded along a number of separable dimensions, such as color,
orientation, spatial frequency, brightness, direction of movement. In
order to recombine these separate representations and to ensure the cor-
rect synthesis of features for each object in a complex display, stimulus
locations are processed serially with focal attention. Any features which
are present in the same central "fixation" of attention are combined to
form a single object. Thus focal attention provides the "glue" which
integrates the initially separable features into unitary objects. Once they
have been correctly registered, the compound objects continue to be per-
ceived and stored as such. However with memory decay or interference,
the features may disintegrate and "float free" once more, or perhaps
recombine to form "illusory conjunctions" (Treisman, 1977).
We claim that, without focused attention, features cannot be related to
each other. This poses a problem in explaining phenomenal experience.
There seems to be no way we can consciously "perceive" an unattached
shape without also giving it a color, size, brightness, and location. Yet
unattended areas are not perceived as empty space. The integration
theory therefore needs some clarification. Our claim is that attention is
necessary for the correct perception of conjunctions, although unattended
features are also conjoined prior to conscious perception. The top-down
processing of unattended features is capable of utilizing past experience
and contextual information. Even when attention is directed elsewhere,
we are unlikely to see a blue sun in a yellow sky. However, in the absence
of focused attention and of effective constraints on top-down processing,
conjunctions of features could be formed on a random basis. These unat-
tended couplings will give rise to "illusory conjunctions."
There is both behavioral and physiological evidence for the idea that
stimuli are initially analyzed along functionally separable dimensions, al-
though not necessarily by physically distinct channels (Shepard, 1964;
Garner, 1974; De Valois & De Valois, 1975). We will use the term "di-
mension" to refer to the complete range of variation which is separately
 Human Perception 5

ATTENTION AND FEATURE INTEGRATION 99

analyzed by some functionally independent perceptual subsystem, and

"feature" to refer to a particular value on a dimension. Thus color and
orientation are dimensions; red and vertical are features on those dimen-
sions. Perceptual dimensions do not correspond uniquely to distinct
physical dimensions. Some relational aspects of physical attributes may
be registered as basic features; for example we code intensity contrast
rather than absolute intensity, and we may even directly sense such
higher-order properties as symmetry or homogeneity. We cannot predict
a priori what the elementary words of the perceptual language may be.
The existence of particular perceptual dimensions should be inferred
from empirical criteria, such as those proposed by Shepard and by
Garner. This paper will suggest several new diagnostics for the separabil-
ity of dimensions, which derive from the feature-integration theory of
attention. In this theory, we assume that integral features are conjoined
automatically, while separable features require attention for their integra-
tion. Consequently, we can infer separability from a particular pattern of
results in the preattentive and divided attention tasks to be described in
this paper.
We have stated the feature-integration hypothesis in an extreme form,
which seemed to us initially quite implausible. It was important, there-
fore, to vary the paradigms and the predictions as widely as possible, in
order to maximize the gain from converging operations. We developed a
number of different paradigms testing different predictions from the
theory. Each experiment on its own might allow other interpretations, but
the fact that all were derived as independent predictions from the same
theory should allow them, if confirmed, to strengthen it more than any
could individually.
(I) Visual search. The visual search paradigm allows us to define a
target either by its separate features or by their conjunction. If, as we
assume, simple features can be detected in parallel with no attention
limits, the search for targets defined by such features (e.g., red, or verti-
cal) should be little affected by variations in the number of distractors in
the display. Lateral interference and acuity limits should be the only
factors tending to increase search times as display size is increased,
perhaps by forcing serial eye fixations. In contrast, we assume that focal
attention is necessary for the detection of targets that are defined by a
conjunction of properties (e.g., a vertical red line in a background of
horizontal red and vertical green lines). Such targets should therefore be
found only after a serial scan of varying numbers of distractors.
(2) Texture segregation. It seems likely that texture segregation and
figure-ground grouping are preattentive, parallel processes. If so, they
should be determined only by spatial discontinuities between groups of
stimuli differing in separable features and not by discontinuities defined by
conjunctions of features.
6 Human Perception

100 TREISMAN AND GELADE

(3) Illusory conjunctions. If focused attention to particular objects is

prevented, either because time is too short or because attention is di-
rected to other objects, the features of the unattended objects are "free
floating" with respect to one another. This allows the possibility of incor-
rect combinations of features when more than one unattended object is
presented. Such "illusory conjunctions" have been reported. For exam-
ple, the pitch and the loudness of dichotic tones are sometimes heard in
the wrong combinations (Efron & Yund, 1974), and so are the distinctive
features of dichotic syllables (Cutting, 1976). In vision, subjects some-
times wrongly recombine the case and the content of visual words pre-
sented successively in the same location (Lawrence, 1971). Treisman
(1977) obtained a large number of false-positive errors in a successive
same-different matching task.when the shapes and colors of two target
items were interchanged in the two test stimuli. Each such interchange
also added a constant to the correct response times, suggesting that the
conjunction of features was checked separately from the presence of
those features.
(4) Identity and location. Again, if focused attention is prevented, the
features of unattended objects may be free floating spatially, as well as
unrelated to one another. Thus we may detect the presence of critical
features without knowing exactly where they are located, although we can
certainly home in on them rapidly. Locating a feature would, on this
hypothesis, be a separate operation from identifying it, and could logically
follow instead of preceding identification. However, the theory predicts
that this could not occur with conjunctions of features. If we have cor-
rectly detected or identified a particular conjunction, we must first have
located it in order to focus attention on it and integrate its features. Thus
location must precede identification for conjunctions, but the two could
be independent for features.
(5) Interference from unattended stimuli. Unattended stimuli should be
registered only at the feature level. The amount of interference or facilita-
tion with an attended task that such stimuli can generate should therefore
depend only on the features they comprise and should not be affected by
the particular conjunctions in which those features occur.
There is considerable evidence in speech perception that the meaning of
unattended words can sometimes be registered without reaching con-
scious awareness (e.g., Corteen & Wood, 1972; Lewis, 1970; MacKay,
1973; Treisman, Squire, & Green, 1974). Since words are surely defined
by conjunctions, the evidence of word-recognition without attention ap-
pears to contradict our hypothesis. However, the data of these studies
indicate that responses to primed and relevant words on the unattended
channel occurred only on 5-30% of trials. It may be possible for a re-
sponse occasionally to be triggered by one or more features of an ex-
pected word, without requiring exact specification of how these features
 Human Perception 7

ATTENTION AND FEATURE INTEGRATION 101

are combined. One study has looked at false-positive responses to rele-

vant words on un unattended channel (Forster & Govier, 1978). They
found far more GSRs to words which sounded similar to the shock-
associated word when these were presented on the unattended than on the
attended channel. This suggests either incomplete analysis of unattended
items or incomplete sensory data.
These predictions identify two clusters of results, corresponding to the
perception of separable features and of conjunctions. Separable features
should be detectable by parallel search; they are expected to give rise to
illusory conjunctions in the absence of attention; they can be identified
without necessarily being located, and should mediate easy texture segre-
gation; they can have behavioral effects even when unattended. Conjunc-
tions, on the other hand, are expected to require serial search; they should
have no effect on performance unless focally attended; they should yield
highly correlated performance in the tasks of identification and location;
they should prove quite ineffective in mediating texture segregation. Our
aim was to test these predictions using two dimensions, form and color,
which are likely, both on physiological and on behavioral grounds, to be
separable. If the predictions are confirmed, we may be able to add our
tests to Garner's criteria, to form a more complete behavioral syndrome
diagnostic of separable or integral dimensions. Thus, if two physical
properties are integral, they should function as a single feature in our
paradigms, allowing parallel search, texture segregation, and detection
without localization. If on the other hand, they are separable, their con-
junctions will require focused attention for accurate perception, and its
absence should result in illusory conjunctions. We may then use these
paradigms to diagnose less clear-cut candidates for separability, such as
the components of letters or schematic faces.
The first three experiments are concerned with visual search; they
compare color-shape conjunctions with disjunctive color and shape fea-
tures as targets; they investigate the effects of practice and the role of
feature discriminability in conjunction search, and test an alternative ac-
count in terms of similarity relations. Experiment IV explores the possi-
bility that local elements of compound shapes (e.g., letters) also function
as separable features, requiring serial search when incorrect conjunctions
could be formed. Experiments V, VI, and VII are concerned with texture
segregation, using colored shapes and letters as texture elements. Ex-
periments VIII and IX explore the relation between identification and
spatial localization, for targets defined by a single feature or by a con-
junction.

EXPERIMENT I
In an experiment reported earlier, Treisman et al. (1977) compared
search for targets specified by a single feature ("pink" in "brown" and
8 Human Perception

102 TREISMAN AND GELADE

"purple" distractors in one condition, "0" in "N" and "T" distractors

in another) and for targets specified by a conjunction of features, a "pink
0" (Opink, in dis tractors Ogreen and N pink). The function relating search
times to display size was flat or nonmonotonic when a single feature was
sufficient to define the target, but increased linearly when a conjunction of
features was required. Experiment I replicates this study with some
changes in the design, to confirm and generalize the conclusions. The
most important change was in the feature search condition: subjects were
now asked to search concurrently for two targets, each defined by a
different single feature: a color (blue) and a shape (S). Thus they were
forced to attend to both dimensions in the feature condition as well as in
the conjunction condition, although they had to check how the features
were combined only when the target was a conjunction (T green). The dis-
tractors were identical in the two conditions (Xgreen and T brown), to ensure
that differences between feature and conjunction search could not result
from greater heterogeneity of the dis tractors in the conjunction condition.
(This had been a possibility in the previous experiment.)
Another question which has become important in evaluating
information-processing hypotheses is how stably they apply across differ-
ent stages of practice. Neisser, Novick, and Lazar (1963), Rabbitt (1967),
and Shiffrin and Schneider (1977) have all shown qualitative changes in
performance as subjects repeatedly perform a particular task. Search ap-
pears to change from conscious, limited capacity, serial decision making
to automatic, fast, and parallel detection. LaBerge (1973) studied the
effects of practice on priming in a visual Sllccessive matching task. He
found that familiarity with the stimuli eventually made matching indepen-
dent of expectancy, and suggested that this was due to unitization of the
features of highly familiar stimuli. We propose that feature unitization
may account also for the change with practice from serial to parallel
processing in a display, in conditions in which such a change occurs. Thus
the development of new unitary detectors for what were previously con-
junctions of features would free us from the constraints of focal attention
to these features both in memory and in a physically present display.
Experiment I explored the possibility that extended practice on a par-
ticular shape-color conjunction (T green) could lead to a change from serial
to parallel detection, which would suggest the possible emergence of a
unitary ''green T'' detector.
Method
Stimuli. The stimulus displays were made by hand, using letter stencils and colored inks
on white cards. The distractors were scattered over the card in positions which appeared
random, although no systematic randomization procedure was used. Four different display
sizes, consisting of 1, 5, 15, and 30 items were used in each condition. An area subtending 14
x so was used for all display sizes, so that the displays with fewer items were less densely
 Human Perception 9

ATTENTION AND FEATURE INTEGRATION 103

packed, but the average distance from the fovea was kept approximately constant. Each
letter subtended 0.8 x 0.6°. To ensure that the target locations did not vary systematically
across conditions, the area of each card was divided into eight sections. This was done by
superimposing a tracing of the two diagonals and an inner elliptical boundary, which sub-
tended 8.5° x 5.5". For each condition and each display size, eight cards were made, one
with a target randomly placed in each of the resulting eight areas (top outer, top inner, left
outer, left inner, right outer, etc.). Another eight cards in each condition and display size
contained no target.
The dis tractors in both conditions were T 1mm·n and X green in as near equal numbers on each
card as possible. The target in the conjunction condition was T.,-w,; in the feature condition,
it was either a blue letter or an S. The blue letter (Thlue or X~r 1 uel matched half the distractors
in shape, and the S (Strrown or S•reenl matched half the distractors in color. The fact that there
were four possible disjunctive targets in the feature condition (although the definition
specified only "blue or S"), should, if anything, impair performance relative to the conjunc-
tion condition.
Procedure. The stimulus cards were presented in an Electronics Development three-
field tachistoscope and RT was recorded as described below.
At the beginning of each trial, subjects viewed a plain white card in the tachistoscope, and
each of their index fingers rested on a response key. The experimenter gave a verbal
"Ready" signal and pressed a button to display a second white card bearing a central
fixation spot, which remained in view for 1 sec and was then immediately replaced in the
field of view by a card bearing a search array. Subjects were instructed to make a key press
with the dominant hand if they detected a target and with the nondominant hand otherwise,
and to respond as quickly as possible without making any errors. RT was recorded to the
nearest millisecond on a digital timer [Advance Electronics, TCI!], which was triggered by
the onset of the search array and stopped when a response key was pressed. Trials on which
an error was made were repeated later in the testing session, and following each error a
dummy trial was given, the results of which were not recorded. Subjects were told their RT
and whether or not they were correct after each trial; they were not however informed of the
dummy trials procedure, the purpose of which was to exclude slow posterror responses from
the data.
Each subject was tested both on conjunctions and on features in separate sessions fol-
lowing an ABBAAB order. Half the subjects began with the feature targets and half with the
conjunction targets. Six subjects did 3 blocks of 128 trials each in each condition, then two of
these subjects volunteered to continue for another 4 blocks in the conjunction condition and
two for another lO blocks, making 13 altogether (a total of 1664 trials). The mean RTs for
these two subjects on the first 3 blocks closely approximated the group means.
Within each block the presentation order of positive and negative trials and of different
display sizes was randomized; thus in each block the subject knew what the target or the two
alternative targets were, but did not know what the array size would be on any given trial.
Each block contained 16 positive and 16 negative trials for each display size.
Subjects. The six subjects, four men and two women, were members of the Oxford
Subject Panel, ages between 24 and 29. Three of them had previously taken part in the
search experiment described in Treisman et a!. (1977).

Results
Figure 1 shows the mean search times for the six subjects over the
second and third blocks in each condition; the first block was treated as
practice. Table 1 gives the details of linear regression analyses on these
data. The results show that search time increased linearly with display
10 Human Perception

104 TREISMAN AND GELADE

SEARCH FOR COLORED SHAPES

NEG

- - CONJUNCTION
- - - DISJUNCTION
2000

1600

w
::;:
i=
z
~ 1200
u
<(
w
a:

800

400

DISPLAY SIZE

FIG. I. Search times in Experiment I.

size in the conjunction condition, the linear component accounting for

more than 99% of the variance due to display size. The ratio of the posi-
tive to the negative slopes in the conjunction condition was 0.43, which is
quite close to half. These results suggest that search is serial and self-
terminating with a scanning rate of about 60 msec per item. The variances
increased more steeply for positive than for negative trials, and for posi-
tives the root mean square of the RTs increased linearly with display size
as predicted for serial self-terminating search.
With the feature targets, the results were very different. For the posi-
tive displays, search times were hardly affected by the number of dis-
tractors, the slopes averaging only 3.1 msec. Deviations from linearity
were significant, and the linear component accounted for only 68% of the
variance due to display size. For the negatives, the linear component
accounted for 96% of the variance due to display size, and departures from
linearity did not reach significance. The slope was, however, less than
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 As it was less than an hour since we had left the camp, it was
quite impossible that he could have been tired, and as for his
blisters, when examined they proved to consist of a single small
“brister” on his instep, which, as we were travelling over smooth
sand and he, like all the rest of us, was walking barefoot, could not
have caused him the slightest inconvenience.
I pointed this out to him and told him that if he stayed behind and
left the caravan he would be certain to die of thirst.
“Never mind,” he replied heroically. “Never mind. I will stay behind
and die. I cannot walk any more. I am tired. You go on, sir, and save
yourselves. I will stay here and die in the desert.”
We had had many scenes of this kind with Khalil, and the bedawin
never failed to enjoy them thoroughly.
“What is he saying?” asked Qway.
I translated as well as I could.
“Malaysh” (“it’s of no consequence”), replied Qway calmly. “Let
him stay behind and die if he wants to. Whack the camels, Abd er
Rahman, and let’s go. We can’t wait. We are in the desert, and short
of water.”
“I shall die,” sobbed Khalil.
“Malaysh,” repeated Qway, without even troubling to look back at
him.
I felt much inclined to tickle the aggravating brute up with my
kurbaj, but it was against my principles to beat a native, so we went
on and left him sitting alone in the desert.
“My wife will be a widow,” screamed Khalil after us—though how
he expected that contingency to appeal to our sympathies was not
quite clear. Musa shouted back some ribald remarks about the lady
in question, and the caravan proceeded cheerfully—not to say
uproariously—upon its way.
After we had gone some distance our road dipped down to a
lower level, and we lost sight of Khalil for a while. I looked back just
before we got out of sight, and saw him sitting exactly where we had
left him. We travelled a considerable distance before a rise in the
ground over which our road ran enabled us to see him again. On
looking back through my glasses, I could just distinguish him sitting
still where we had left him. I quite expected that by the time we had
gone a few hundred yards—or at any rate as soon as we were out of
sight—that Khalil would have got up and followed us. But the fellahin
of Egypt are a queer-tempered race, who when they cannot get
exactly what they want, will sometimes fall into a fit of suicidal sulks
that is rather difficult to deal with. As Khalil appeared to have got into
this sulky frame of mind I began to fear that he really intended to
carry out his threat and to stay where he was until he either died of
thirst, or had been so far left behind by the caravan that he would be
unable to rejoin us, which would have led to the same result.
Qway, when I asked him how long it would take for us to reach the
oasis, was most positive in saying that it would be all that we could
do to get across the dunes before sunset the next day. The sand
belt, though easy enough to cross in daylight, when we could see
where we were going, would have presented a very serious obstacle
in the dark. With the possibility of another day of scorching simum or,
worse still, a violent sandstorm in our teeth, before we reached
Dakhla, a delay that would cause us to camp the next night on the
wrong side of the dunes, and so entail another twelve hours in the
desert before reaching water, might have had very serious
consequences.
“If we don’t cross the sand to-morrow,” said Qway impressively,
“we may not reach Mut at all. Look at the camels. Look at our tanks.
They are nearly empty. We must go on. We can’t wait.”
I couldn’t risk sacrificing the whole caravan for the sake of one
malingerer; so I told Abd er Rahman to whack up the camels, and
we left the “delicutly nurchered” Khalil to die in the desert.
Soon afterwards we lost sight of him altogether. We had started
early in the morning and we went on throughout the day, with hardly
a halt, till eight o’clock at night, when we were compelled to stop in
order to rest the camels. We saw nothing more of Khalil and gave
him up for lost. To give him a last chance we lighted a big fire and
then composed ourselves to sleep as well as we could, on a wholly
insufficient allowance of water.
Towards morning Khalil staggered into the camp amid the jeers
and curses of the men, croaked a request for water and, having
drunk, flung himself down to sleep, too dead beat even to eat.
That little episode cured Khalil of malingering, and he gave no
further trouble on our journey to Mut. It just shows what a little tact
will do in dealing with a native. Many brutal fellows would have
beaten the poor man!
The next day luckily proved fairly cool, and we made better
progress than we expected. We consequently struck the dune belt
just after noon and, as we seemed to have found a low part of it, by
Qway’s advice I decided to tackle it at that point.
But in coming to this decision I had overlooked a most important
factor in the situation—the light. Curious as it may seem, dunes are
sometimes almost as difficult to cross in the blazing sunshine at
noon as they are in the dark. The intense glare at this time of day
makes the almost white sand of which they are composed most
painful to look at, and the total absence of any shade prevents their
shape being seen and makes even the ripples practically invisible.
In consequence of this state of affairs, Qway, while riding ahead of
the caravan to show the way, blundered without seeing where he
was going, off the flat top of a dune on to the steep face below, was
thrown, and he and his hagin only just escaped rolling down to the
bottom, a fall of some thirty feet. After that, until we reached the
farther side of the belt, he remained on foot, dragging his hagin
behind him. Once across the dunes the rest of the journey was easy
enough.
The news of affairs in Europe that we heard in Dakhla on our
return was simply heartbreaking. The revolution in Turkey that had
promised to be rather a big thing, had fizzled out entirely. The Sultan
Abdul Hamid—“Abdul the Damned”—it is true had been deposed;
but his brother, Mohammed V, had been made ruler in his stead, and
was firmly seated on the rickety Turkish throne. The disturbance had
quieted down in Turkey; there was no chance of there being a
republic, and so the threatened invasion of Egypt by the Senussi,
was not in the least likely to come off.
All the same, we felt fairly pleased with ourselves, for we had
been for eighteen days in the desert away from water, with only
seven camels, in the most trying time of the year, and had got back
again without losing a single beast. But anyone who feels inclined to
repeat this picnic is advised to take enough water and suitable food.
The Gubary road by which we travelled to Kharga followed the
foot of the cliff that forms the southern boundary of the plateau upon
which ’Ain Amur lies. It was very featureless and uninteresting. But
though it contained no natural features of any importance, the
bedawin have a number of landmarks along it to which they have
given names and by which they divide the road up into various
stages. It is curious to see how the necessity for naming places
arises as soon as a district becomes frequented.
These little landmarks are often shown in maps in a very
misleading way. One of those on the Gubary road is known as Bu el
Agul. There is another Bu el Agul, or Abu el Agul, as it is sometimes
called, on the Derb et Tawil, or “long road,” that runs from the Nile
Valley, near Assiut, across the desert to Dakhla Oasis. I have often
seen this place marked on maps in an atlas, the name being printed
in the same type as that used for big mountains, or villages in the
Nile Valley, and there was nothing whatever in the way in which it
was shown on these maps to indicate its unimportance.
Now Bu el Agul is only a grave—what is more, it is not even a real
grave, it is a bogus one. The commonest form of a native nickname
is to christen a man the father of the thing for which he is best known
among them. I was myself at one time known as “Abu Zerzura,” the
“Father of Zerzura,” because I was supposed to be looking for that
oasis, and later on as “Abu Ramal,” “the father of sand,” because I
spent so much time among the dunes.
Bu el Agul means the “father of hobbles.” One of the greatest
risks that an inexperienced Arab runs, when travelling alone in the
desert, is that of allowing his camel to break loose and escape
during the night. Then, unless he be near a well, having no beast to
carry his water-skin, his fate is probably sealed. Many lives have
been lost in this way.
With tragedies of this description constantly before their minds,
the desert guides, as a reminder to their less experienced brethren
to secure their beasts properly at night, have made an imitation
grave about half-way along each of the desert roads. This grave is
supposed to represent the last resting-place of the “father of
hobbles,” who has lost his life owing to his not having tied up his
camel securely at night. It is the custom of every traveller, who uses
the road, to throw on to the “grave” as he passes it, a worn-out
hobble or water-skin, or part of a broken water vessel, with the result
that in time a considerable pile accumulates.
It was the end of June by the time we reached Kharga again.
Anyone attempting to work in the desert at any distance away from
water after March is severely handicapped by the high temperature. I
had already experienced nearly three months of these conditions,
and the prospect of doing any good in the desert during the
remainder of the hot weather was so remote that I returned to
England for the remainder of the summer.
 CHAPTER XII

M Y first season’s work in the desert had been sufficiently

successful to warrant a second attempt, as I had carried out
one of the objects on my programme by managing to cross the
dune-field; so I determined to follow it up by another journey. The
main piece of work that I planned for my second year was to push as
far as possible along the old road to the south-west of Dakhla, that
we had already followed for about one hundred and fifty miles.
Before starting I heard rumours of a place that had not previously
been reported called Owanat, that lay upon this road and was
apparently the first point to which it went. But I was able to gather
little information on the subject. I could not even hear whether it was
inhabited or deserted. I was not even sure whether water was to be
found there.
The journey to this place seemed likely to be of great length
before water could be reached, and as the ultimate destination of the
road was quite uncertain, and nothing was known of the part into
which it led, the possibility of getting into an actively hostile district
had to be considered, and arrangements to be made to make sure of
our retreat into Egypt, in the event of our camels being taken from us
and our finding it necessary to make the return journey on foot.
The distance we should have to travel from Dakhla Oasis, along
the road, before we found water or reached an oasis could not, I
imagined, be more than fifteen days’ journey at the most. I hoped, if
we managed to cover this distance and no other difficulties arose,
that we should be able to push on still farther, and eventually get
right across the desert into the French Sudan, where the authorities
had been warned to look out for me and to give me any assistance
they could.
 This old road from its size had at one time evidently been one of
the main caravan routes across the desert. The Senussi, it was
known, paid considerable attention to the improvement of the desert
roads, and, from what the natives told me, under their able
management, Kufara Oasis had become a focus to which most of
the caravan routes of this part of the desert converged.
This road must always have been a difficult one, owing to the long
waterless stretch that had to be crossed before the first oasis could
be reached. So it seemed likely that it had been abandoned in
consequence of another road to Kufara having been made easier by
sinking of new wells.
My main object in this journey was to see if this route was still
usable for caravans or, if not, whether it could not be made so by
means of new wells, or by improving the road at difficult points.
A road running up from Wanjunga to Dakhla Oasis would have cut
right across all the caravan routes, leading up to Kufara from the
Bedayat country and the Eastern Sudan, and so might have diverted
into Egypt a great deal of the traffic then going to Kufara and Tripoli.
In addition some of the trade carried by the great north and south
road, from the Central Sudan through Tikeru to Kufara, might also
have been brought into Dakhla by reopening this old route. As the
railway from the Nile Valley into Kharga could easily have been
extended into Dakhla, that oasis might have supplanted Kufara as
the main caravan centre of the Libyan Desert, and a comparatively
large entrepôt trade might have been developed there, the
merchandise being distributed by means of the railway into Egypt.
The total value of the goods carried across this district by caravan
is not great; but still the trade is of sufficient importance to make it
worth while to attempt to secure it, especially as, if that were done, it
would give a considerable hold over the inaccessible tribes of the
interior, and at the same time be a severe blow to the Senussi, who
for some time had threatened to become rather a nuisance.
To meet the requirements of the long fifteen days’ journey to
Owanat from Dakhla, or rather of our return in the event of our
having to beat a hurried retreat on foot, I had thirty small tanks made
of galvanised iron. These were placed in wooden boxes, a couple
being in each box, and packed round with straw to keep the water
cool and prevent them from shaking about in their cases.
Each pair of tanks contained enough water for the men and
myself for one day, with a slight margin over to allow for
contingencies. During the journey, one of these boxes could be left
at the end of every day’s march, with sufficient food to carry us on to
the next depot, in the event of our finding it necessary to retrace our
steps. With a pair of tanks in each box, I felt as certain as it was
possible to be that, even if one of them should leak and lose the
whole of its contents, there would still be sufficient water in the
second tank to last us till we reached the next depot. Even if all our
zemzemias and gurbas had been lost, these tanks, even when full,
were of a weight that could easily have been carried by a man during
the day’s march. When empty they could be thrown away.
I went up to Assiut to get together a caravan for the journey,
engaged a brother of Abd er Rahman’s, named Ibrahim, and also
secured Dahab for the journey. Qway and Abd er Rahman joined me
in Assiut, putting up at a picturesque old khan in the native town, and
thus our party became complete. The attempts I had made to find a
guide who knew the parts of the desert beyond the Senussi border
had again proved fruitless.
I hesitated at first to take Ibrahim into the desert partly because—
like many young Sudanese—I found him rather a handful, who
required a good deal of licking into shape, but chiefly because he
had not had much experience with camels, owing to his having acted
for some time as a domestic servant in Kharga Oasis. What finally
decided me to take him was one of those small straws that so often
tell one the way of the wind when dealing with natives.
Once, while loading a camel, preparatory to moving camp, the
baggage began to slip off his back and Ibrahim, as is usual with
bedawin in the circumstances, immediately invoked the aid of his
patron saint by singing out, “Ya! Sidi Abd es Salem.”
The saint that a native calls upon in these cases is nearly always
the one that founded the dervish Order to which he belongs, and this
Abd es Salem ben Mashish—to give him his full name—was the
founder of the Mashishia dervishes and is perhaps still better known
to Moslems as the religious instructor of Sheykh Shadhly, one of the
most famous of all Mohammedan divines.

OLD KHAN IN ASSIUT.

The cardinal principle of the Mashishia is to abstain entirely from

politics—a most useful character to have in a servant when going
into the country of the Senussi. The same principle was adopted by
the Shadhlia order and nearly all its numerous branches, and also by
a set of dervishes which split from the Mashishia, that is known as
the Madania—the old Madania, not the new Madania, which is of a
very different character.
Ibrahim’s brother, Abd er Rahman, used to invoke Abd el Qader el
Jilany, the founder of the great Qadria order of dervishes, the
followers of which, as a rule, are about the least fanatical of
Moslems.
Qway, though he made great protestations of keenness, I soon
found to be obstructing my preparations, and he developed signs of
dishonesty that I had not noticed in him before. What was worse, I
found him secretly communicating with a member of the Senussi
zawia in Qasr Dakhla, who, for some unexplained reason, had come
to Assiut, and who seemed to be in frequent communication with
him. This all pointed to some underhand dealing with the Senussi,
who, until they were brought to their senses by being well beaten in
the great war, always opposed any attempt to enter their country—
usually by tampering with a traveller’s guides.
I concluded that I had better keep a closer watch upon the
conduct of my guide than I had done before.
Having finished all arrangements in Assiut and dispatched the
caravan by road to Kharga, I set out myself by train.
At Qara Station on the Western Oasis line, I found Nimr, Sheykh
Suleyman’s brother. He brought up to me a jet black Sudani, about
six feet three in height, who was so excessively lightly built that he
could hardly have weighed more than eight stone. He answered to
the name of “Abdullah abu Reesha”—“Abdulla the father of
feathers,” a nickname given to him on account of his extreme
thinness. He had, however, the reputation of being one of the best
guides in the desert, and was always in request whenever a caravan
went down to collect natron from Bir Natrun, where there was always
a very fair chance of a scrap with the Bedayat. Nimr suggested that I
should take him as a guide, and appeared to be greatly disappointed
when I told him I had already engaged Qway. I promised, however,
to bear him in mind, and, if I wanted another guide at any time, to
write and ask Sheykh Suleyman to send him.
 Nimr told me the rather unwelcome news that the bedawin, who
had been pasturing their camels in Dakhla Oasis, were all scuttling
back again with their beasts to the safety of the Nile Valley, as there
was a report that a famous hashish runner and brigand, known as
’Abdul ’Ati, was coming in to raid the oasis. As I had counted on
being able to hire some camels off these Arabs in the oasis, to
supplement my own caravan when starting off on our fifteen days’
journey, this threatened raid was rather a nuisance and seemed
likely somewhat to upset my plans.
This ’Abdul ’Ati was a well-known character in the desert, and if
half the reports concerning him were true, he must have been a most
formidable personage. He was rather badly wanted by the Frontier
Guard (Camel Corps), as one of his principal occupations was that of
smuggling hashish (Indian hemp), at which he had proved himself
most successful. When business of this kind was slack, he
occasionally indulged in a little brigandage, presumably just to keep
his hand in.
Ibrahim, had the usual admiration for an outlaw common to youths
of his age all over the world, and ’Abdul ’Ati was his idol, and he was
a born hero-worshipper. He declared that he was a dead shot, and
owned a rifle that carried two hours’ journey of a caravan, i.e. about
five miles, and that he had no fear of anyone—not even of the Camel
Corps.
When next I heard of ’Abdul ’Ati, he was very busy in Tripoli
fighting against the Italians, and apparently making very good
indeed. The Camel Corps shot him eventually.
My caravan reached Kharga a day or two after my arrival, having
come across the desert from Assiut by a road that enters the oasis at
its northern end.
In Kharga I met Sheykh Suleyman, and, as I was camped not far
from his tent, rode over and spent an evening with him. Qway, of
course, accompanied me in hopes of a free meal, but was most
frigidly received by the sheykh, who treated him in the most
contemptuous manner. We had supper, consisting of bread and
treacle and hard boiled eggs, followed by coffee and cigarettes. After
which we sat for a time and talked.
“You had better take me as a guide instead of Qway,” suddenly
suggested Sheykh Suleyman.
Qway looked quickly up, evidently greatly annoyed, and the social
atmosphere became distinctly electric.
I explained that I could not well do that as I had found Qway an
excellent guide the year before, and had already signed an
agreement to take him on again for the season. Qway rather hotly
added some expostulation that I could not quite catch; but the gist of
it apparently was that Sheykh Suleyman was not quite playing the
game.
The sheykh laughed. “Maleysh” (never mind), he said, “if you want
another guide, write me a letter, and I will send Abdulla abu Reesha.
He’s a good man—better than Qway.”
Qway commenced a heated reply, only to be laughed at by
Sheykh Suleyman. As the interview threatened to become distinctly
stormy, I took the earliest opportunity of returning to camp.
The sheykh insisted on providing my breakfast the next morning.
Qway, for once, effaced himself, while breakfast and the subsequent
tea were in progress. He seemed to have seen as much of Sheykh
Suleyman as he wanted for the moment.
We got off at about ten in the morning, and after a short march
pitched our camp early in the day at Qasr Lebakha, a small square
mud-built keep on a stone foundation, having circular towers at the
four corners, all in a fairly good state of preservation. The walls at
the top of the tower were built double, with a kind of parapet walk
round the top, which may originally have been a mural passage of
which the roof had fallen in.
From Qasr Lebakha we went on to ’Ain Um Debadib. Our road lay
almost due west, parallel to the cliff of the plateau on our right, and
turned out to be anything but a good one, being both hilly and very
heavy going owing to the drift sand. The camels, too, gave a lot of
trouble.
 The caravan, as a whole, turned out to be the worst I ever owned.
There was, however, one exception. He was an enormously powerful
brute from the Sudan, that it seemed almost impossible to
overburden. The proverbial “last straw” that would have broken that
camel’s back could not, I believe, have been grown. But like other
powerful camels, he was always trying to bite the other beasts and
was a confirmed “man-eater.”
’Ain Um Debadib is a considerably larger place than Qasr
Lebakha. At the time of my visit it was inhabited by two men and
their families, natives of Kharga village, to which they occasionally
returned, leaving this little oasis to look after itself. Like Qasr
Lebakha, the place was originally defended by a castle, also
apparently of Roman date. An old road runs north-west from ’Ain Um
Debadib, which leads over the cliff to the north of the oasis by what
appears from below to be a difficult pass. I intended at some later
date to come back and try to find this place; but unfortunately the
opportunity did not occur. The Spaniards have a proverb to the effect
that hell is not only paved with good intentions, but is also roofed
with lost opportunities, and probably, in omitting to find out what lay
beyond that cliff, I added a slate to the infernal regions, for I think it
extremely likely that a depression lay on the other side of it
containing the well of ’Ain Hamur—not to be confused with ’Ain Amur
—or possibly a place called ’Ain Embarres.
 CHAPTER XIII

W E reached Dakhla Oasis on 23rd January, and stayed for a day

in the scrub-covered area, through which the road runs before
entering the inhabited portion of the oasis, on the chance of getting a
shot at gazelle. While camped here the ’omda of Tenida, the nearest
village, who was notorious throughout the oasis for his meanness,
sent down over night a ghaffir (night watchman) after dark, to spy out
who we were, and, having made sure of our identity, carefully got
himself out of the way, in order to avoid having to invite us in to a
meal, according to the hospitable custom of the oasis!
As gazelle-hunting, owing to some confounded bedawin, who
were camping in the neighbourhood and wandering all over the
place, seemed likely to prove a waste of energy, I moved on the
following day to the village of Belat.
Very little barley is grown in the oasis beyond that required for the
use of the inhabitants; but as I heard that the ’omda had a large
store of it that he had been unsuccessfully trying to sell, I
endeavoured to buy some off him.
But unfortunately he “followed the Skeykh,” and Qway continuing
his obstructive tactics of Assiut, secretly got hold of him, with the
result that, when I approached him on the subject, the ’omda
declared that there was not a grain left in the village—“not one.”
A distinctly stormy scene followed, which ended in the ’omda
caving in and producing about a quarter of a ton of the absent grain,
which I bought off him at an exorbitant price.
After this I gave him a thorough good dressing down, and then
graciously forgave him and we drowned our enmity in the usual tea. I
was not altogether dissatisfied with the transaction, for I felt that I
had read the ’omda a lesson that he would not forget for some time.
In this, however, as events turned out, I was to be grievously
disappointed—my troubles with regard to the camels’ fodder had
only just begun.
On our arrival in Mut, I went at once to the post office for letters,
and finding that the upper story of the place was vacant, arranged to
rent it during my stay in the oasis. It proved to be far better quarters
than the old gloomy, scorpion-haunted store, and I found no reason
to regret the change.

UPPER FLOOR OF POST OFFICE.

The man who tended the garden of the post office was quite a
local celebrity. He was no other than the blind drummer who
officiated in the band, when there was a wedding in the district. He
was also the town crier, and I frequently met him in the streets,
where, after beating a roll on his drum to attract attention, he would
call out the news that he was engaged to spread.
Curiously, considering that he was totally blind, he had the
reputation of being the best grower of vegetables in the
neighbourhood, and his services as gardener were in great request
in consequence. He was passionately fond of flowers, and was
almost invariably seen with a rose, or a sprig of fruit blossom in his
hand, which, as he made his way about the streets, he continually
smelt. Once, when I happened to meet him, the supply of flowers
must have run short, for he was inhaling, with evident gusto, the
delicious perfume of an onion!
His sense of locality must have been wonderful, for he made his
way about the streets almost as easily as though in full possession
of perfect eyesight. Plants of all kinds seemed to be an obsession
with him. He would squat down by the side of a bed of young
vegetables he had planted, feel for the plants by running his hands
rapidly over the soil, and, having found one, would tenderly finger it
to see how it was growing. He would in this way rapidly examine
each individual plant in the bed, and occasionally comment on the
growth of some particular plant since he had last handled it. The loss
of his eyesight had evidently greatly quickened his other faculties, for
he could find any plant he wished without difficulty, and seemed to
have a perfect recollection of the state in which he had last left them,
never, I was told, making any mistake in their identity. The gratified
smile that lighted up his blind, patient face, when his charges were
doing well was quite pathetic.
While staying in the post office my camels were accommodated
about a hundred yards away, in an open space under the lea of the
high mud-built wall that surrounds the town, close to where a break
had been made in it to allow free passage to the cultivation beyond.
The choice of this site for the camping ground of the camels turned
out to be unfortunate, for the locality was haunted. A man, it was
said, had been killed near there while felling a tree, and his ghost—
or as some said a ghul—frequently appeared there.
 A night or two after our arrival, Ibrahim, who was sleeping there
alone with the camels, came up to my room, just as I was getting into
bed, and announced that he was not a bit afraid—and he did not
seem in the least perturbed—but an afrit kept throwing clods of earth
at the camels, which prevented them from sleeping, so he thought
he had better come and tell me about it.
The clods came from over the wall, and several times he had
rushed round the corner, through the gap, to try and see the afrit who
was throwing them, but he had been unable to do so, so he wanted
me to come down and attend to him.
 BLIND TOWN CRIER, MUT.

It is not often that one gets the chance of interviewing a real

ghost, so taking a candle and my revolver, I went down to the camel
yard. Ibrahim showed me a pile of clods that had been thrown that
he had collected—there must at least have been a dozen of them—
and showed me the direction from which they had come.
It certainly was rather uncanny. On the other side of the wall was
a flat open space, and there was nowhere within stone’s throw
where any human being could possibly have hidden. I waited for
some time to see if any more clods would be thrown; but as none
came, I told Ibrahim in a loud voice to shoot any afrit he saw and
gave him my revolver, and then in a lower tone told him that he was
on no account to shoot at all, but that if anyone came he might
threaten to do so.
 Ibrahim was perfectly satisfied. It was not so much the possession
of the revolver that reassured him as the fact that it was made of
iron, and afrits, as of course is well known, are afraid of iron!
No more clods were thrown that night; but they began again on
the following evening, and still Ibrahim was unable to see the culprit.
The thing was becoming a nuisance and it had to be stopped. It was
of no use going to the native officials; they would have been just as
ready to believe in the afrit or ghul yarn as any of the natives of the
oasis, so I decided to tackle the question myself.
Dahab, carrying a pot of whitewash and a brush, and I, with a
sextant and the nautical almanac, repaired to the scene of the
haunting in the afternoon. I wrote “Solomon” and “iron” in Arabic on
the wall, drew two human eyes squinting diabolically, a little devil and
the diagram of the configuration of Jupiter’s Satellites, taken from the
nautical almanac—an extremely cabalistic-looking design. I then
waved the sextant about and finally touched each of the marks I had
drawn on the wall with it in turn.
By this time a small crowd had collected, and were watching the
proceedings with considerable interest. A six-inch sextant, fitted with
Reeve’s artificial horizon, is as awe-inspiring an instrument as any
magician could show.
I told Dahab to explain to the crowd that I had just put a tulsim
(talisman) on the wall, and that if it were an afrit that had been
throwing the clods, the words, “Solomon” and “iron,” acting in
conjunction with Jupiter’s Satellites, would certainly do for him
completely. But if it were a human being who had been throwing the
clods, the little devil and the eyes would get to work upon him at
once.
The devil I explained was a particularly malignant little English imp
that I had under my control, and if anyone threw any more clods at
my camels, I had so arranged things, that the devil in the form of this
tiny little black imp would crawl up his nostrils while he slept, and
would stick the forked end of his tail into his brain and keep waggling
it about, causing him the greatest suffering, until in a few years’ time
he went mad. Then it would stamp with red-hot feet on the backs of
his eyeballs till they fell out; after which the culprit would die in
horrible agony.
Dahab, on the way back, said he thought my tulsim looked a very
good one, but he did not at all believe in the afrit theory.
“Afrit,” he said in his funny English. “Never. Ibrahim he very fine
man and women in Dakhla all bad, very bad, like pitch. One women
he want speak Ibrahim.” This was very likely the size of it.
But I laid the ghost anyway. No more clods were thrown at my
camels.