Editing Shape (section)

== Human perception of shapes ==
Human vision relies on a wide range of shape representations.<ref name="ShapeComp">{{Cite journal|last1=Morgenstern|first1=Yaniv|last2=Hartmann|first2=Frieder|last3=Schmidt|first3=Filipp|last4=Tiedemann|first4=Henning|last5=Prokott|first5=Eugen|last6=Maiello|first6=Guido|last7=Fleming|first7=Roland|title=An image-computable model of visual shape similarity|journal=PLOS Computational Biology|year=2021|language=en|volume=17|issue=6|pages=34|doi=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008981|pmid=34061825 |pmc=8195351 |doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |doi=10.1016/j.cviu.2013.04.005|title=50 Years of object recognition: Directions forward|journal=Computer Vision and Image Understanding|volume=117|issue=8|pages=827–891|year=2013|last1=Andreopoulos|first1=Alexander|last2=Tsotsos|first2=John K.}}</ref> Some psychologists have theorized that humans mentally break down images into simple geometric shapes (e.g., cones and spheres) called [[geon (psychology)|geons]].<ref>Marr, D., & Nishihara, H. (1978). Representation and recognition of the spatial organization of three-dimensional shapes. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, 200, 269–294.</ref> Meanwhile, others have suggested shapes are decomposed into features or dimensions that describe the way shapes tend to vary, like their ''segmentability'', ''compactness'' and ''spikiness''.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Huang|first=Liqiang|title=Space of preattentive shape features|journal=Journal of Vision|year=2020|language=en|volume=20|issue=4|pages=10|doi=10.1167/jov.20.4.10|pmid=32315405|pmc=7405702|doi-access=free}}</ref>  When comparing shape similarity, however, at least 22 independent dimensions are needed to account for the way natural shapes vary. <ref name="ShapeComp"/>

There is also clear evidence that shapes guide human [[visual spatial attention|attention]].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Alexander |first1=R. G. |last2=Schmidt |first2=J. |last3=Zelinsky |first3=G.Z. |title=Are summary statistics enough? Evidence for the importance of shape in guiding visual search. |journal=Visual Cognition |date=2014 |volume=22 |issue=3–4 |pages=595–609|pmid=26180505 |pmc=4500174 |doi=10.1080/13506285.2014.890989 }}</ref>