Position-based motion perception for color and texture stimuli: effects of contrast and speed

Motion can be perceived either through low-level, motion-energy detection or through tracking the change in position of features. Previously we have shown that, while luminance-based motion likely is detected with velocity-sensitive motion-energy units, patterns defined by texture or binocular disparity ('second-order' stimuli) were tracked by a position-sensitive mechanism (Seiffert & Cavanagh (1998) Vision Research, 38, 3569-3582). Here, we use the same technique, measuring motion amplitude thresholds of oscillating gratings over a range of temporal frequencies and find that the motion of low-contrast equiluminant red/green gratings is also detected with position tracking. In addition, we find that as contrast or speed increases these results change: high-contrast or high-speed equiluminant color or texture-based motion is detected by velocity-sensitive mechanisms. These results help resolve the dispute over the processes which detect the motion of non-luminance based stimuli. Both systems are available, but their relative efficiency changes as a function of contrast and speed. A position-tracking process is more sensitive at low contrasts and low speeds whereas a motion-energy system is more sensitive at high contrasts and high speeds.     

Similarities between visual processing of shear and uniform motion

A number of papers have claimed that at moderate to high contrasts, sensitivity is higher for shear motion than for uniform motion. We show in a 2 x 2AFC task, designed to minimize any potential artefacts due to criterion level or response bias, that sensitivities are essentially equal for shear and uniform motion under general conditions. It has also been claimed that position tracking enhances sensitivity for shear motion. We added moving sinusoidal gratings to stationary sinusoidal gratings of the same spatial frequency and orientation, to create stimuli in which position changes and motion energy have opposite directions, to show that shear and uniform motion are both subserved by motion-energy mechanisms at speeds above 2.0 deg/s and by position tracking at slower speeds.     

The oblique effect depends on perceived, rather than physical, orientation and direction

Observers can better discriminate orientation or direction near the cardinal axes than near an oblique axis. We investigated whether this well-known oblique effect is determined by the physical or the perceived axis of the stimuli. Using the simultaneous tilt illusion, we generated perceptually different orientations for the same inner (target) grating by contrasting it with differently oriented outer gratings. Subjects compared the target orientation with a set of reference orientations. If orientation discriminability was determined by the physical orientations, the psychometric curves for the same target grating would be identical. Instead, all subjects produced steeper curves when perceiving target gratings near vertically as opposed to more obliquely. This result of orientation discrimination was confirmed by using adaptation-generated tilt aftereffect to manipulate the perceived orientation of a given physical orientation. Moreover, we obtained the same result in direction discrimination by using motion repulsion to alter the perceived direction of a given physical direction. We conclude that when the perceived orientation or direction differs from the physical orientation or direction, the oblique effect depends on perceived, rather than physical, orientation or direction. Finally, as a by-product of the study, we found that, around the vertical direction, motion repulsion is much stronger when the inducing direction is more clockwise to the test direction than when it is more counterclockwise.     

Independent coding of object motion and position revealed by distinct contingent aftereffects

Despite several findings of perceptual asynchronies between object features, it remains unclear whether independent neuronal populations necessarily code these perceptually unbound properties. To examine this, we investigated the binding between an object's spatial frequency and its rotational motion using contingent motion aftereffects (MAE). Subjects adapted to an oscillating grating whose direction of rotation was paired with a high or low spatial frequency pattern. In separate adaptation conditions, we varied the moment when the spatial frequency change occurred relative to the direction reversal. After adapting to one stimulus, subjects made judgments of either the perceived MAE (rotational movement) or the position shift (instantaneous phase rotation) that accompanied the MAE. To null the spatial frequency-contingent MAE, motion reversals had to physically lag changes in spatial frequency during adaptation. To null the position shift that accompanied the MAE, however, no temporal lag between the attributes was required. This demonstrates that perceived motion and position can be perceptually misbound. Indeed, in certain conditions, subjects perceived the test pattern to drift in one direction while its position appeared shifted in the opposite direction. The dissociation between perceived motion and position of the same test pattern, following identical adaptation, demonstrates that distinguishable neural populations code for these object properties.     

Analysis of the motion of 2-dimensional patterns: evidence for a second-order process.

The sum of two differently orientated moving sinusoidal gratings of similar spatial frequency, contrast, and velocity appears as a single coherent "plaid" pattern. The visual system is thought to analyse the motion of plaids in two stages, first analysing the motion of the (1-D) components, and then calculating a speed and direction which is consistent with those 1-D motions. We studied the apparent direction of motion of plaids made by adding two components that had the same spatial frequency and contrast, and were symmetrically oriented about the vertical axis. The gratings moved in jumps, and we studied the effect of varying the size of the jump, the angle between the component gratings, and the temporal interval between the jumps, on the perceived direction of motion. When the size of the jumps was increased to 3/8 of their spatial period, the perceived direction of motion of the plaid pattern reversed, although if one component were presented alone, its direction of movement did not reverse. Reversed motion of this type was consistently obtained if the angle between the components was greater than about 140 degrees, if the interval between jumps was at least 25 msec, and if the spatial frequency of the component gratings was less than about 4 c/deg. When the angle between the components was smaller, or the time between jumps was greater, most observers saw normal motion in the direction predicted by the two-stage hypothesis. When the spatial frequency was raised, observers saw no consistent motion.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

The influence of spatial frequency on perceived temporal frequency and perceived speed

Speed matching experiments were conducted using drifting gratings of different spatial frequencies in order to assess the influence of spatial frequency on perceived speed. It was found that gratings of high spatial frequency appear to drift more slowly than low spatial frequency gratings of the same actual velocity. The perceived temporal frequency of a counterphase grating similarly declines as spatial frequency increases. The previously reported effect of temporal frequency on perceived spatial frequency probably does not contribute to these phenomena. Our results suggest that the motion sensors thought to operate within different spatial frequency ranges have different velocity transfer functions, a fact not incorporated in existing computational models of motion perception.     

Coherent motion perception fails at low contrast

If the Fourier components of a moving plaid have similar temporal frequency, spatial frequency and contrast, coherent motion is perceived according to subjective judgements. We have devised a more objective method of determining the conditions required for coherent motion. Moving plaid stimuli were created with one stationary component. Plaids with a stationary component always have a single perceived direction of motion, which is determined by the presence or absence of coherent motion. In a temporal two-interval forced-choice paradigm we used a direction discrimination task to investigate the effect of varying the temporal and spatial characteristics of the Fourier components and pattern contrast on the probability of coherent motion perception. Agreement across observers regarding the conditions required for coherent motion was excellent using this more objective method. We find that patterns do not produce coherent motion when presented at contrast threshold, irrespective of how similar the Fourier components are. We also confirm that when the temporal frequency, spatial frequency and contrast of the gratings are sufficiently similar, observers report the direction of motion indicating coherent motion.     

Integration of motion information during binocular rivalry.

When two moving gratings are superimposed in normal viewing they often combine to form a pattern that moves with a single direction of motion. Here, we investigated whether the same mechanism underlies pattern motion when drifting gratings are presented independently to the two eyes. We report that, with relatively large circular grating patches (4 deg), there are periods of monocular dominance in which one eye's orientation alone is perceived, usually moving orthogonal to the contours (component motion). But, during the transitions from one monocular view to the other, a fluid mosaic is perceived, consisting of contiguous patches, each containing contours of only one of the gratings. This entire mosaic often appears to move in a single direction (pattern motion), just as when two gratings are literally superimposed. Although this implies that motion signals from the perceptually suppressed grating continue to influence the perception of motion, an alternative possibility is that it reflects a strategy that involves integrating directional information from the contiguous single-grating patches. To test between these possibilities, we performed a second experiment with very small grating stimuli that were about the same size as the contiguous single-grating patches in the mosaic (1-deg diameter). Despite the fact that the form of only one grating was perceived, we report that pattern motion was still perceived on about one third of trials. Moreover, a decrease in the occurrence of pattern motion was apparent when the contrast and spatial frequency of the gratings were made more different from each other. This phenomenon clearly demonstrates an independent binocular interaction for form and motion.     

Stimulus factors affecting illusory rebound motion

Stimulus attributes that influence a recently reported illusion called "illusory rebound motion" (IRM; [Hsieh, P.-J., Caplovitz, G. P., & Tse, P. U. (2005). Illusory rebound motion and the motion continuity heuristic. Vision Research, 45, 2972-2985.]) are described. When a bar alternates between two different colors, IRM can be observed to traverse the bar as if the color were shooting back and forth like the opening and closing of a zipper, even though each color appears in fact all at once. Here, we tested IRM over dynamic squares or disks defined by random dot or checkerboard textures to show that (1) IRM can be perceived in the absence of first-order motion-energy (or when the direction of net first-order motion-energy is ambiguous); (2) the direction of IRM is multistable and can change spontaneously or be changed volitionally; and (3) the perceived frequency of IRM is affected by several factors such as the contours of the stimulus, stimulus texture, and motion-energy.     

Moving two-dimensional patterns can capture the perceived directions of lower or higher spatial frequency gratings.

Coherent plaid motion is produced by superimposing two one-dimensional gratings of the same spatial frequency moving +/- 60 degrees from the intersection-of-constraints (IOC) resultant direction. These moving plaids were found to change the perceived direction of a third one-dimensional grating, either 6-fold lower or higher in spatial frequency, from traveling in one of the plaid's component direction to the IOC resultant direction. We describe this phenomenon as coherence capture. Coherence capture was found to be effective between plaids with 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5 c/deg components and gratings of 3.0, 6.0 and 9.0 c/deg respectively. It was also found to be effective between plaids with 3.0 c/deg components and gratings of 0.5 c/deg. However, coherence capture between higher spatial frequency plaids and lower spatial frequency gratings became less effective when the component spatial frequencies of the plaid increased.     

The influence of spatial and temporal noise on the detection of first-order and second-order orientation and motion direction

Thresholds for identifying the direction of second-order motion (contrast-modulated dynamic noise) are consistently higher than those for identifying spatial orientation, unlike first-order gratings for which the two thresholds are typically the same. Two explanations of this phenomenon have been proposed: either first-order and second-order patterns are encoded by separate mechanisms with different properties, or dynamic noise selectively impairs ("masks") sensitivity to second-order motion direction but not orientation. The former predicts the two thresholds should remain distinct for second-order patterns, irrespective of the temporal structure (static vs. dynamic) of the noise carrier. The latter predicts direction thresholds should be higher than orientation thresholds, for both second-order and first-order motion patterns, when dynamic (but not static) noise is present. To resolve this issue we measured direction and orientation thresholds for first-order (luminance) and second-order (contrast or polarity) modulations of static or dynamic noise. Results were decisive: The two thresholds were invariably the same for first-order stimuli but markedly different (direction thresholds approximately 50% higher) for second-order stimuli, regardless of the temporal properties (static or dynamic) and the overall contrast of the noise, or the drift temporal frequency of the envelope. This suggests that first-order and second-order motion are encoded separately and that the mechanisms encoding second-order stimuli cannot determine direction at the absolute threshold for spatial form.     

The stereoscopic (cyclopean) motion aftereffect is dependent upon the temporal frequency of adapting motion

This study investigated whether the stereoscopic (cyclopean) motion aftereffect (induced by adaptation to moving binocular disparity information) is dependent upon the temporal frequency or speed of adapting motion. The stereoscopic stimuli were gratings created from disparity embedded in a dynamic random-dot stereogram. Across different combinations of stereoscopic spatial frequency, temporal frequency and speed of adapting motion, the duration of the aftereffect was dependent upon temporal frequency (maximal aftereffect=1-2 cyc s(-1)). These results support the idea that stereoscopic motion is processed by a cortical mechanism that computes cyclopean motion energy.     

Spatial frequency selective mechanisms underlying the motion aftereffect.

The motion aftereffect (MAE) was used to study the spatial frequency selectivity of suprathreshold motion perception. Observers were adapted to drifting sine-wave gratings confined to a retinal eccentricity of approx. 4 deg. The magnitude of the subsequent MAE was measured while viewing a stationary sine-wave grating test surface of one of a number of spatial frequencies. The largest MAE was found when the spatial frequency of the test stimulus was the same as that of the adapting stimulus. This phenomenon held for spatial frequencies between 0.5 and 4 c/deg, and was robust with changes in contrast of either adapting or test gratings. However, at an adapting spatial frequency of 0.25 c/deg, the peak MAE was observed at 0.5 c/deg. Control experiments indicated that this peak shift was not the result of the reduced number of cycles in the stimulus, nor the temporal frequency. There was no measurable MAE at spatial frequencies lower than 0.25 c/deg. These results suggest the existence of a "lowest adaptable channel" for the motion aftereffect.     

Frequency-doubling illusion under scotopic illumination and in peripheral vision

PURPOSE: The authors sought to determine whether frequency-doubling illusion (FDI) could be perceived under scotopic illumination at central and peripheral retinal locations. For comparison, perception of the FDI at the central and peripheral retina under photopic illumination was also evaluated. METHODS: Five subjects matched the apparent spatial frequency of counterphase flickering sinusoidal gratings with stationary sinusoidal gratings presented foveally and out to 20 degrees eccentricity under photopic and scotopic illumination conditions. Two spatial frequencies (0.25 and 0.50 cpd) were used at four temporal frequencies (2, 8, 15, and 25 Hz). Subsequent experiments explored the range of spatial and temporal frequency stimulus conditions under which the scotopic FDI might be observed. RESULTS: Under scotopic illumination conditions, the apparent spatial frequency of eccentrically presented 0.25- and 0.50-cpd flickering gratings gradually increased as a function of flicker frequency and approaches "doubling" at 15 Hz. Under photopic conditions, the apparent spatial frequency of 0.25-cpd flickering at 25 Hz was approximately doubled in all four primary meridians at central and peripheral eccentricities. The final experiment showed that the spatiotemporal range under which the scotopic FDI could be seen was similar to the photopic illumination condition reported earlier. CONCLUSIONS: Scotopic FDI is similar to photopic FDI at the central and the peripheral retina. This suggests that similar mechanisms are responsible for generating the illusion under both photopic and scotopic illumination conditions.     

Motion transparency from opposing luminance modulated and contrast modulated gratings

Two luminance gratings of identical orientation and opposite directions of motion are seen as moving across one another (i.e. moving transparently) only if they differ in spatial frequency (SF) by a factor of four or more. Identical SF gratings produce counter-phase flicker. This suggests that opposite motions cancel each other at the level of motion detection. Here we show that motion transparency is perceived with two gratings of the same SF and orientation moving in opposite directions, when one grating is a first-order, luminance modulated (LM) stimulus and the other is a second-order, contrast modulated (CM) stimulus. Participants were presented with various combinations of LM and CM gratings. In experiment 1, the test stimulus contained the summation of oppositely moving LM and CM gratings. In order to assess the simultaneous perception of both motions, we used a paradigm where observers were required to discriminate the direction of motion of each component from counter-phase flicker. Results show that observers can accurately discriminate both LM and CM directions of motion in a transparent configuration. We next measured the effect of varying the contrast/modulation depth of LM and CM gratings on the perception of transparency. The perception of motion transparency depends upon the relative contrast/modulation depth of the component gratings: raising the contrast of the LM component necessitates a greater modulation depth for the CM component if motion transparency is to be perceived. Our results are consistent with a motion system comprised of two separate, but not wholly independent, pathways for the encoding of LM and CM signals. We hypothesise that the observed contrast dependence is the result of contrast gain control mechanisms that receive inputs from separate motion systems.     

Perceived direction of moving two-dimensional patterns depends on duration, contrast and eccentricity.

Type II two-dimensional motion is produced by superimposing two one-dimensional drifting cosine gratings with velocity vectors lying on the same side of the intersection-of-constraints (IOC) resultant. When type II patterns were constructed with components having the same spatial frequency and contrast, perceived direction was found to be biased toward the vector sum direction at short durations and approached the direction predicted by IOC only after some time lag. This time lag was contrast dependent. At 5% contrast, the perceived direction after 1 sec of presentation remained biased by more than 20 degrees. Direction perception was also measured at 15 degrees eccentricity. At this eccentricity the perceived direction of type II patterns was grossly biased away from the IOC prediction in the direction of the component vectors by an average of 25 degrees.     

The Barberplaid Illusion: Plaid Motion is Biased by Elongated Apertures

The perceived direction of motion of plaids windowed by elongated spatial Gaussians is biased toward the window's long axis. The bias increases as the relative angle between the plaid motion and the long axis of the window increases, peaks at a relative angle of ≈45 deg, and then decreases. The bias increases as the window is made narrower (at fixed height) and decreases as the component spatial frequency increases (at fixed aperture size). We examine several models of human motion processing (cross-correlation, motion-energy, intersection-of-constraints, and vector-sum), and show that none of these standard models can predict our data. We conclude that spatial integration of motion signals plays a crucial role in plaid motion perception and that current models must be explicitly expanded to include such spatial interactions. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.     

Spatial summation properties of the human ocular following response (OFR): evidence for nonlinearities due to local and global inhibitory interactions

Ocular following responses (OFRs) are the initial tracking eye movements that can be elicited at ultra-short latency by sudden motion of a textured pattern. A recent study used motion stimuli consisting of two large coextensive sine-wave gratings with the same orientation but different spatial frequency and moving in (1/4)-wavelength steps in the same or opposite directions: when the two gratings differed in contrast by more than about an octave then the one with the higher contrast completely dominated the OFR and the one with lower contrast lost its influence as though suppressed [Sheliga, B. M., Kodaka, Y., FitzGibbon, E. J., & Miles, F. A. (2006). Human ocular following initiated by competing image motions: Evidence for a winner-take-all mechanism. Vision Research, 46, 2041-2060]. This winner-take-all (WTA) outcome was attributed to nonlinear interactions in the form of mutual inhibition between the mechanisms sensing the competing motions. In the present study, we recorded the initial horizontal OFRs to the horizontal motion of two vertical sine-wave gratings that differed in spatial frequency and were each confined to horizontal strips that extended the full width of our display (45 degrees ) but were only 1-2 degrees high. The two gratings could be coextensive or separated by a vertical gap of up to 8 degrees , and each underwent motion consisting of successive (1/4)-wavelength steps. Initial OFRs showed strong dependence on the relative contrasts of the competing gratings and when these were coextensive this dependence was always highly nonlinear (WTA), regardless of whether the two gratings moved in the same or opposite direction. When the two gratings moved in opposite directions the nonlinear interactions were purely local: with a vertical gap of 1 degrees or more between the gratings OFRs approximated the linear sum of the responses to each grating alone. On the other hand, when the two gratings moved in the same direction the nonlinear interactions were more global: even with a gap of 8 degrees -the largest separation tried-OFRs were still substantially less than predicted by the linear sum. When the motions were in the same direction, we postulate two nonlinear interactions: local mutual inhibition (resulting in WTA) and global divisive inhibition (resulting in normalization). Motion stimuli whose responses were totally suppressed by coextensive opponent motion of higher contrast were rendered invisible to normalization, suggesting that the local interactions responsible for the WTA behavior here occur at an earlier stage of neural processing than the global interactions responsible for normalization.     

Can spatio-temporal energy models of motion predict feature motion?

Current "spatio-temporal energy" models of how we perceive pattern motion have been very successful in helping us to understand the mechanisms of motion perception. Although they have been supported by a large number of physiological and psychological studies, they have so far not provided a complete explanation for a number of results. These results emerge from experiments concerned with predicting perceived motion direction from patterns comprising two or more components. It has been suggested that these results are more consistent with an earlier type of model based on the motion of two-dimensional features. This paper briefly describes how three generic spatio-temporal energy models have been extended to predict motion derived from two-component stimuli. A new model is then presented that utilises similar architecture to the two-stage spatial-temporal energy model proposed by Adelson and Movshon (Nature 300 (1982) 523). The first stage is a spatial temporal filtering stage and the second stage computes the intersection of constraints (IOC), an important constraint used in combining motion information across two or more components. In the model presented here the second stage is different. A directional spatial second derivative is used to extract zero-crossings at the component level, i.e. gratings. If any zero-crossing falls in the same spatial position for two or more components its displacement is tracked using a nearest neighbour match. Tracking these 'intersecting zero-crossings' essentially computes the IOC but also provides other properties that predict non-IOC motion, and second-order component motion. Surprising new insights are described into how current spatio-temporal energy models may also account for these results. However, unlike the model presented here, they rely on operations carried out on the two-dimensional pattern.     

What is the Denominator for Contrast Normalisation?

The perceived speed of 1 c/deg sinusoidal gratings of contrast 0.02 was measured in the presence of high contrast (0.50) 1 c/deg sinusoidal gratings (called modifiers). The modifiers drifted or were counterphase modulated at various temporal frequencies. The presence of a modifier with temporal frequencies (0 and 3 Hz) lower than the low contrast moving grating decreased its perceived speed while the presence of modifiers with higher temporal frequencies (8, 12 and 16 Hz) increased its perceived speed. A modifier of the same temporal frequency (6 Hz) as the standard grating had no effect upon the perceived speed of the low contrast gratings. Moving modifiers are more effective than counterphase flickering modifiers in biasing the perceived speed of low contrast gratings if they move in the same direction as the test grating and less effective if they move in the opposite direction. Finally, a modifier presented in an annulus surrounding the test grating is more effective than a modifier presented in a circular patch above or below the test grating in raising the perceived speed of low contrast gratings. This suggests that perceived speed depends on the ratio of low and high temporal frequency signals averaged over a significant area of the visual field. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd