Coercive fixation choices are particular kinds of visual stimuli, glimpsed in peripheral vision, that the eyes will tend to turn to in an effectively automatic way because they hold the most interest. The most effective such stimulus in this respect is movement. Next in effectiveness are features whose familiarity is ingrained, like faces. After that, coercive fixation choices are generally confined to areas of high information, identifiable by significant differences within the field of vision. This is, of course, the basic principle of camouflage, which Bonnard adopts when he smoothes differences between figure and ground to defer fixation choices--for example, by giving them a similar coloration.
Related to this principle is that tonal contrasts are recognized more quickly and with fewer errors by peripheral vision, and attract its attention more than tonal similarities, as do eccentric more than even contours, sharp more than soft accents. Although research with the elements of pictorial peripheral vision is by no means complete, it seems additionally that closed polygonal forms are identified more quickly and accurately than histoforms (e.g., bar graphs and bar codes) throughout the visual field, but with an increase in eccentricity (the angle away from the fovea) of more than fifty degrees the surface of a form becomes the more salient dimension than the shape, solidly toned (silhouetted) forms being more quickly and accurately identified than outlined forms.
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