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Since the days of early Gestalt psychology it has been well known that figures are by no means constituted by contours alone. The problem is that contours, if they are to delimit figural forms or objects, can have this function only on their one side. On the other side there is, as Edgar Rubin has shown, no limitation, because the ground on which the figure lies stretches uninterruptedly behind the figure. This so called "one-sided limit function of contours"¹ is the reason why the ground usually has no figural form but is instead unlimited. Figure 1 provides a good example of the one-sided limit function, which changes the side of the contour more than once following the course of the ingeniously drawn line. Beginning from the left side, the line first delimits the door, then the man and finally the dog, changing its limiting direction at the beginning and the end of the dog's ear. The question arises as to how the cognitive system decides on which side of a contour the figure stands and on which side the ground.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-2990-1_5

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