Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Attneave (1954) claimed that approximations made by connecting the points of mximum curvature ( MAX points) in a picture were necessary and sufQcient for representing shapes for recognition. L o w e (1985) in turn argued that an equally sufficient representation is created by connecting points of m i n i m u m curvature ( MIN points); hence MAX points are not necessary. However, both Attneave and L o w e neglected the role of curvature concentration in their arguments. It is hypothesized here that for shapes with curvature concentrated at a small number of points, MAX point pictures are far better representations than MIN pictures. More general^,ttiemore curvature was concentrated in fewer points, the greater the advantage of MAX figures over MIN figures in recognizability. This hypothesis was experimentally verified; s o m e implications for shape representation are discussed.