Reaction time to motion onset: local dispersion model analysis

Investigation of center-surround interaction in motion with reaction time for direction discrimination

How motion onset asynchrony (MOA) alters the effects of stimulus size on reaction time (RT) for direction discrimination of a drifting grating was examined. MOA is a delay from the stimulus onset to the onset of motion. Without MOA, RTs were found to increase as the stimulus size was increased at high contrast, but decrease with it at low contrast or at high noise levels. With MOA, however, RTs did not increase as the stimulus size increased even at high contrast. These results suggest that sudden stimulus onset evokes the increase of RTs with the increase of stimulus size at high contrast. RTs for direction discrimination of a drifting Gabor patch (the target) surrounded by a different drifting or a static grating as well as RTs for the target that was not surrounded by an additional grating were measured. The RTs for the target moving in the same or opposite direction as the motion of the surrounding grating were larger than those for the target with the static grating or no additional grating at moderate or high contrast. There was no significant difference between the RTs for the target moving in the same direction as the surrounding grating and the RTs for the target moving in the opposite direction. At low contrast and without MOA, however, the RTs for the target moving in the same direction as the surrounding grating were larger than those for the target moving in the opposite direction. These results suggest surround suppression at low contrast under some conditions. They also suggest that the decrease of RTs for discriminating motion direction of a drifting single Gabor patch with the increase of stimulus size at low contrast does not necessarily mean the absence of surround suppression.

Reaction time to motion onset and magnitude estimation of velocity in the presence of background motion

Reaction times (RT) to motion onset of a target grating moving at 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0 or 1.6 °/s and magnitude estimation of the same velocities were studied in the presence of the surrounding background motion which was either in the same or opposite direction. Surprisingly, we found no relative motion effect: if the background motion, irrespective of its direction, affected the target, then it delayed the RTs and decreased velocity ratings. The background motion was effective on RTs to motion onset only when the target was relatively small and immediately surrounded by a moving background. Increases in RTs were mostly explained by an apparent slowdown of the target stimulus velocity which was caused by the interference from the moving background. The background motion also affected velocity ratings by decreasing them without systematic effect of the background motion direction.

Visually guided reaching depends on motion area MT+

Visual information is crucial for goal-directed reaching. A number of studies have recently shown that motion in particular is an important source of information for the visuomotor system. For example, when reaching a stationary object, movement of the background can influence the trajectory of the hand, even when the background motion is irrelevant to the object and task. This manual following response may be a compensatory response to changes in body position, but the underlying mechanism remains unclear. Here we tested whether visual motion area MT+ is necessary to generate the manual following response. We found that stimulation of MT+ with transcranial magnetic stimulation significantly reduced a strong manual following response. MT+ is therefore necessary for generating the manual following response, indicating that it plays a crucial role in guiding goal-directed reaching movements by taking into account background motion in scenes.

Detection of colour changes in a moving object

The colour-changing stimulus paradigm is based on a tacit assumption that kinematic attributes (velocity, movement direction) do not affect the detection of colour change (). In this study three experiments are reported that clearly demonstrate that the time needed to detect changes in colouration of a moving stimulus becomes shorter with its velocity. The reduction of reaction time with increase of velocity is a purely kinematic effect independent on the reduction of reaction time caused by the stimulus uncertainty effects. It is concluded that colour coding mechanisms are not totally ignorant about movement parameters.

Detection of motion onset and offset: reaction time and visual evoked potential analysis

Manual reaction time (RT) and visual evoked potentials (VEP) were measured in motion onset and offset detection tasks. A considerable homology was observed between the temporal structure of RTs and VEP intervals, provided that the change in motion was detected as soon as the VEP signal has reached critical threshold amplitude. Both manual reactions and VEP rise in latency as the velocity of the onset or offset motion decreases and were well approximated by the same negative power function with the exponent close to -2/3. This indicates that motion processing is normalised by subtracting the initial motion vector from ongoing motion. A comparison of the motion onset VEP signals in two different conditions, in one of which the observer was instructed to abstain from the reaction and in the other to indicate as fast as possible the beginning of the motion, contained accurate information about the manual response.

Dependency of reaction times to motion onset on luminance and chromatic contrast

We measured reaction times for detecting the onset of motion of sinusoidal gratings of 1 c/deg, modulated in either luminance or chromatic contrast, caused to move abruptly at speeds ranging from 0.25 to 10 deg/s (0.25-10 Hz). At any given luminance or chromatic contrast, RTs varied linearly with temporal periodicity (r2 congruent with 0.97), yielding a Weber fraction of period. The value of the Weber fraction varied inversely with contrast, differently for luminance and chromatic contrast. The results were well simulated with a simple model that accumulated change in contrast over time until a critical threshold had been reached. Two crucial aspects of the model are a second-stage temporal integration mechanism, capable of accumulating information for periods of up to 2 s, and contrast gain control, different for luminance than for chromatic stimuli. The contrast response for luminance shows very low semi-saturating contrasts and high gain, similar to LGN M-cells and cells in MT; that for colour shows high semi-saturating contrasts and low gain, similar to LGN P-cells. The results suggest that motion onset for luminance and chromatic gratings are detected by different mechanisms, probably by the magno- and parvo-cellular systems.

Reaction time to motion onset of luminance and chromatic gratings is determined by perceived speed

We measured reaction times for detecting motion onset for sinusoidal gratings whose contrast was modulated in either luminance or chromaticity, for various drift rates and contrasts. In general, reaction times to chromatic gratings were slower than to luminance gratings of matched cone contrast, but the difference in response depended critically on both contrast and speed. At high image speeds there was virtually no difference, whereas at low speeds, the difference was pronounced, especially at low contrasts. At high image speeds there was little dependence of reaction times on contrast (for either luminance or colour), whereas at low speeds the dependence was greater, particularly for chromatic stimuli. This pattern of results is reminiscent of those found for apparent speed of drifting luminance and chromatic gratings. We verified the effects of contrast on perceived speed, and went on to show that the effects of contrast on reaction times are totally predictable by the perceived speed of the stimuli, as if it were perceived rather than physical speed that determined reaction times. Our results support that idea of separate systems for fast and slow motion (with separate channels for luminance and colour at slower speeds), and further suggest that apparent speed and reaction times may be determined at a similar stage of motion analysis.

What determines the detection of changes in motion velocity? A comment on Dzhafarov, Sekuler, and Allik (1993)

We comment on a recent model aimed at explaining data on speed of reaction to motion onset and to changes in motion velocity. The model is based on calculating the running variance of the stimulus positions passed during the motion. We show that although the model is successful in explaining data on motion onset and suprathreshold velocity changes, it may not be able to explain data on time of reaction to changes in velocity when these are near the detection threshold.

Contrast response of a movement-encoding system

The ability to identify the direction of apparent motion in a sequence of two short light pulses of different amplitudes at separate spatial locations was studied. The product of pulse amplitudes is a very poor predictor of such performance when one of the two signals is much higher in amplitude than the other: above a certain amplitude the probability of correct identification becomes virtually independent of the amplitude of the larger pulse. There was no noticeable difference in performance between low-high and high-low contrast sequences. Both the direction identification and the simple contrast-detection probabilities can be represented by the same psychometric function of the luminance increment delta L, provided that delta L is normalized by the nth power of the background luminance level, Lb. These results suggest that the general Reichardt-type scheme of movement encoding should be modified in the manner proposed for the fly's visual system [J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 6, 116 (1989)]: (1) the mean luminance is subtracted from the input signal before the signal is subjected to a nonlinear compression and (2) saturation characteristics are inserted into both branches of the two mirror-symmetric motion-detection subunits before multiplication of the input signals. The identical metric of the contrast response suggests that movement discrimination and luminance detection are two different special-purpose computations performed on the output of the same encoding network.

Magnitude of luminance modulation specifies amplitude of perceived movement

A compelling impression of movement, which is perceptually indistinguishable from a real displacement, can be elicited by patterns containing no spatially displaced elements. An apparent oscillation, w-movement, was generated by a stationary pattern containing a large number of horizontal pairs of spatially adjacent dots modulated in brightness. The observer's task was to adjust the perceived amplitude of the w-motion to match the amplitude of a real oscillation. All of the data can be accounted for by a simple rule: If the relative change in the luminance, W = delta L/L, between two adjacent stationary dots is kept constant, the distance over which these dots appeared to travel in space comprises a fixed fraction of the total distance by which they are separated. The apparent amplitude of the w-motion increases strictly in proportion with luminance contrast, provided that the contrast is represented in the motion-encoding system by a rapidly saturating compressive Weibull transformation. These findings can be explained in terms of bilocal motion encoders comparing two luminance modulations occurring at two different locations.

Detection of changes in speed and direction of motion: reaction time analysis

Observers reacted to the change in the movement of a random-dot field whose initial velocity, V0, was constant for a random period and then switched abruptly to another value, V1. The two movements, both horizontally oriented, were either in the same direction (speed increments or decrements), or in the opposite direction but equal in speed (direction reversals). One of the two velocities, V0 or V1, could be zero (motion onset and offset, respectively). In the range of speeds used, 0-16 deg/sec (dps), the mean reaction time (MRT) for a given value of V0 depended on magnitude of V1-V0 only: MRT approximately r+c(V0)/magnitude of V1-V0 beta, where beta = 2/3, r is a velocity-independent component of MRT, and c(V0) is a parameter whose value is constant for low values of V0 (0-4 dps), and increases beginning with some value of V0 between 4 and 8 dps. These and other data reviewed in the paper are accounted for by a model in which the time-position function of a moving target is encoded by mass activation of a network of Reichardt-type encoders. Motion-onset detection (V0 = 0) is achieved by weighted temporal summation of the outputs of this network, the weights assigned to activated encoders being proportional to their squared spatial spans. By means of a "subtractive normalization," the visual system effectively reduces the detection of velocity changes (a change from V0 to V1) to the detection of motion onset (a change from 0 to V1-V0). Subtractive normalization operates by readjustment of weights: the weights of all encoders are amplified or attenuated depending on their spatial spans, temporal spans, and the initial velocity V0. Assignment of weights and weighted temporal summation are thought of as special-purpose computations performed on the dynamic array of activations in the motion-encoding network, without affecting the activations themselves.

Reaction times to motion onset and motion detection thresholds reflect the properties of bilocal motion detectors

Several different psychophysical paradigms are used to study human motion perception. A unifying framework for the interpretation of all data is lacking. As a step towards a universal model for motion detection we show that previously published reaction times to motion onset and thresholds for the detection of periodic motion may be derived from the velocity dependent properties of bilocal motion detectors of the Reichardt correlator type. Thus, these data sets seem to support the concept of bilocal motion detectors.

Spatial and velocity tuning of processes underlying induced motion

A nulling procedure was used to quantify the velocity and spatial frequency tuning of induced motion for sinusoidal gratings. For each spatial frequency of test and inducing gratings, there was a range of low velocities which resulted in strong induction, with a gain of close to 1. For low spatial frequencies induction occurred at higher velocities than was the case for high spatial frequencies. Induced motion shows bandpass spatial frequency tuning, with a bandwidth of about two octaves at half-height. Induced motion appears to be mediated by spatial channels with a low pass temporal characteristic. To a first approximation, induced motion appears to be a product of velocity and spatial frequency.