Vernier in motion: what accounts for the threshold elevation?

Eye movements elevate crowding in idiopathic infantile nystagmus syndrome

Idiopathic infantile nystagmus syndrome is a disorder characterised by involuntary eye movements, which leads to decreased acuity and visual function. One such function is visual crowding – a process whereby objects that are easily recognised in isolation become impaired by nearby flankers. Crowding typically occurs in the peripheral visual field, although elevations in foveal vision have been reported in congenital nystagmus, similar to those found with amblyopia. Here, we examine whether elevated foveal crowding with nystagmus is driven by similar mechanisms to those of amblyopia – long-term neural changes associated with a sensory deficit – or by the momentary displacement of the stimulus through nystagmus eye movements. A Landolt-C orientation identification task was used to measure threshold gap sizes with and without either horizontally or vertically placed Landolt-C flankers. We assume that a sensory deficit should give equivalent crowding in these two dimensions, whereas an origin in eye movements should give stronger crowding with horizontal flankers given the predominantly horizontal eye movements of nystagmus. We observe elevations in nystagmic crowding that are above crowding in typical vision but below that of amblyopia. Consistent with an origin in eye movements, elevations were stronger with horizontal than vertical flankers in nystagmus, but not in typical or amblyopic vision. We further demonstrate the same horizontal elongation in typical vision with stimulus movement that simulates nystagmus. Consequently, we propose that the origin of nystagmic crowding lies in the eye movements, either through image smear of the target and flanker elements or through relocation of the stimulus into the peripheral retina.

Without low spatial frequencies, high resolution vision would be detrimental to motion perception

A normally sighted person can see a grating of 30 cycles per degree or higher, but spatial frequencies needed for motion perception are much lower than that. It is unknown for natural images with a wide spectrum how all the visible spatial frequencies contribute to motion speed perception. In this work, we studied the effect of spatial frequency content on motion speed estimation for sequences of natural and stochastic pixel images by simulating different visual conditions, including normal vision, low vision (low-pass filtering), and complementary vision (high-pass filtering at the same cutoff frequencies of the corresponding low-vision conditions) conditions. Speed was computed using a biological motion energy-based computational model. In natural sequences, there was no difference in speed estimation error between normal vision and low vision conditions, but it was significantly higher for complementary vision conditions (containing only high-frequency components) at higher speeds. In stochastic sequences that had a flat frequency distribution, the error in normal vision condition was significantly larger compared with low vision conditions at high speeds. On the contrary, such a detrimental effect on speed estimation accuracy was not found for low spatial frequencies. The simulation results were consistent with the motion direction detection task performed by human observers viewing stochastic sequences. Together, these results (i) reiterate the importance of low frequencies in motion perception, and (ii) indicate that high frequencies may be detrimental for speed estimation when low frequency content is weak or not present.

The impact of retinal motion on stereoacuity for physical targets

In a series of studies using physical targets, we examined the effect of lateral retinal motion on stereoscopic depth discrimination thresholds. We briefly presented thin vertical lines, along with a fixation marker, at speeds ranging from 0 to 16 deg·s^-1. Previous investigations of the effect of retinal motion on stereoacuity consistently show that there is little impact of retinal motion up to 2 deg·s^-1, however, thresholds appear to rise steeply at higher velocities (greater than 3 deg·s^-1). These prior experiments used computerized displays to generate their stimuli. In contrast, with our physical targets we find that stereoacuity is stable up to 16 deg·s^-1, even in the presence of appreciable smearing due to visual persistence. We show that this discrepancy cannot be explained by differences in viewing time, prevalence of motion smear or by high frequency flicker due to display updates. We conclude that under natural viewing conditions observers are able to make depth discrimination judgements using binocular disparity signals that are rapidly acquired at stimulus onset.

Revealing individual differences in strategy selection through visual motion extrapolation

Humans are constantly challenged to make use of internal models to fill in missing sensory information. We measured human performance in a simple motion extrapolation task where no feedback was provided in order to elucidate the models of object motion incorporated into observers' extrapolation strategies. There was no "right" model for extrapolation in this task. Observers consistently adopted one of two models, linear or quadratic, but different observers chose different models. We further demonstrate that differences in motion sensitivity impact the choice of internal models for many observers. These results demonstrate that internal models and individual differences in those models can be elicited by unconstrained, predictive-based psychophysical tasks.

Influence of correspondence noise and spatial scaling on the upper limit for spatial displacement in fully-coherent random-dot kinematogram stimuli

Correspondence noise is a major factor limiting direction discrimination performance in random-dot kinematograms [1]. In the current study we investigated the influence of correspondence noise on Dmax, which is the upper limit for the spatial displacement of the dots for which coherent motion is still perceived. Human direction discrimination performance was measured, using 2-frame kinematograms having leftward/rightward motion, over a 200-fold range of dot-densities and a four-fold range of dot displacements. From this data Dmax was estimated for the different dot densities tested. A model was proposed to evaluate the correspondence noise in the stimulus. This model summed the outputs of a set of elementary Reichardt-type local detectors that had receptive fields tiling the stimulus and were tuned to the two directions of motion in the stimulus. A key assumption of the model was that the local detectors would have the radius of their catchment areas scaled with the displacement that they were tuned to detect; the scaling factor k linking the radius to the displacement was the only free parameter in the model and a single value of k was used to fit all of the psychophysical data collected. This minimal, correspondence-noise based model was able to account for 91% of the variability in the human performance across all of the conditions tested. The results highlight the importance of correspondence noise in constraining the largest displacement that can be detected.

Eye movements: the past 25 years

This article reviews the past 25 years of research on eye movements (1986-2011). Emphasis is on three oculomotor behaviors: gaze control, smooth pursuit and saccades, and on their interactions with vision. Focus over the past 25 years has remained on the fundamental and classical questions: What are the mechanisms that keep gaze stable with either stationary or moving targets? How does the motion of the image on the retina affect vision? Where do we look - and why - when performing a complex task? How can the world appear clear and stable despite continual movements of the eyes? The past 25 years of investigation of these questions has seen progress and transformations at all levels due to new approaches (behavioral, neural and theoretical) aimed at studying how eye movements cope with real-world visual and cognitive demands. The work has led to a better understanding of how prediction, learning and attention work with sensory signals to contribute to the effective operation of eye movements in visually rich environments.

How well can people judge when something happened?

One way to estimate the temporal precision of vision is with judgments of synchrony or temporal order of visual events. We show that irrelevant motion disrupts the high temporal precision that can be found in such tasks when the two events occur close together, suggesting that the high precision is based on detecting illusory motion rather than on detecting time differences. We also show that temporal precision is not necessarily better when one can accurately anticipate the moments of the events. Finally, we illustrate that a limited resolution of determining the duration of an event imposes a fundamental problem in determining when the event happened. Our experimental estimates of how well people can explicitly judge when something happened are far too poor to account for human performance in various tasks that require temporal precision, such as interception, judging motion or aligning moving targets spatially.

Stereothresholds for moving line stimuli for a range of velocities

This study examined the influence of lateral target motion on the stereothresholds for bright vertical lines at a range of velocities. Stimuli were presented for 200 ms with horizontal velocities from 0 to 12 deg/s. Observers' horizontal eye movements were recorded on additional trials, and confirmed that the velocity of retinal image motion closely matched the velocity of the stimulus. In three auxiliary experiments, stereothresholds were measured (1) after equating the detectability of targets that moved at different velocities, (2) for moving and stationary stimuli with durations between 20 and 200 ms, and (3) for stationary stimuli presented at eccentricities of 0.6 and 1.2 deg. The results indicate that stereothresholds are unaffected by velocities up to approximately 2 deg/s, but worsen in proportion to the velocity at higher speeds. The results of our auxiliary experiments demonstrate that the increase in stereothresholds during image motion cannot be attributed primarily to a reduction in the detectability of the stimulus, a decrease in the effective exposure duration, or non-foveal viewing. We conclude that the elevation of stereo thresholds during lateral motion is consistent with a shift in the sensitivity of the visual system toward lower spatial frequencies as a result of motion blur.

The shape and size of crowding for moving targets

Our ability to identify alphanumeric characters can be impaired by the presence of nearby features, especially when the target is presented in the peripheral visual field, a phenomenon is known as crowding. We measured the effects of motion on acuity and on the spatial extent of crowding. In line with many previous studies, acuity decreased and crowding increased with eccentricity. Acuity also decreased for moving targets, but the absolute size of crowding zones remained relatively invariant of speed at each eccentricity. The two-dimensional shape of crowding zones was measured with a single flanking element on each side of the target. Crowding zones were elongated radially about central vision, relative to tangential zones, and were also asymmetrical: a more peripheral flanking element crowded more effectively than a more foveal one; and a flanking element that moved ahead of the target crowded more effectively than one that trailed behind it. These results reveal asymmetrical space-time dependent regions of visual integration that are radially organised about central vision.

Velocity dependence of Vernier and letter acuity for band-pass filtered moving stimuli

The ability to see fine detail diminishes when the target of interest moves at a speed greater than a few deg/s. The purpose of this study was to identify fundamental limitations on spatial acuity that result from image motion. Discrimination of Vernier offset was measured for a pair of vertical abutting lines and letter resolution was measured using a four-orientation letter 'T'. These stimuli were digitally filtered using one of five band-pass (bandwidth=1.5 octaves) filters with a center frequency between 0.83 and 13.2 c/deg, and presented at velocities that ranged from 0 to 12 deg/s. Filtered and unfiltered stimuli were presented for 150 ms at a constant multiple (4x or 2x) of the contrast-detection threshold at each velocity. For stimuli of low to middle spatial frequency (up to 3.3 c/deg), Vernier and letter acuity for equally detectable targets are essentially unaffected by velocity up to 12 deg/s, i.e., for temporal frequencies of motion (velocity x spatial frequency) up to approximately 50 Hz. For stimuli of higher spatial frequency, acuity remains essentially constant until the velocity corresponds to a temporal frequency of about 30 Hz, and increases thereafter. Both Vernier and letter acuities worsen by approximately a factor of two for each one-octave decrease in filter spatial frequency. Both types of acuities worsen also as the contrast of the stimulus is reduced, but Vernier discrimination exhibits a stronger contrast-dependence than letter resolution. Our results support previous suggestions that a shift in the spatial scale used by the visual system to analyze spatial stimuli is principally responsible for the degradation of acuity in the presence of image motion. The results are consistent with a spatio-temporal-frequency limitation on spatial thresholds for moving stimuli, and not with a temporal-frequency limitation per se.

Comparison of thresholds for high-speed drifting vernier and a matched temporal phase-discrimination task

For rapidly translating targets, vernier thresholds correspond to millisecond asynchronies between targets. The 'temporal hypothesis' is that these thresholds reflect the limiting sensitivity of asynchrony detectors. Previous studies showed that temporal thresholds are generally higher than vernier thresholds, but failed to reject the 'temporal hypothesis' because stimuli had differing spatiotemporal characteristics, and temporal thresholds depend strongly on stimulus and task. Here we use matched grating stimuli to test - and reject - the temporal hypothesis. Expressed as asynchrony, temporal phase discrimination was typically 10-fold poorer than vernier thresholds, and differed in dependence on spatial frequency, temporal frequency, contrast, and susceptibility to stroboscopic masks.

Elevation of Vernier thresholds during image motion depends on target configuration

Previously we showed that thresholds for abutting Vernier targets are unaffected by motion, as long as the targets are processed by the same spatial-frequency channel at each velocity and remain equally detectable [Invest. Ophthalmol. Visual Sci. (Suppl.) 37, S734 (1996)]. In this study we compared Vernier thresholds for stationary and moving abutting and nonabutting targets (gaps = 0, 18, and 36 arc min) for velocities of 0-16 deg/s. The Vernier targets were spatially filtered vertical lines (peak spatial frequency = 3.3 or 6.6 c/deg), presented at contrast levels of two, four, and eight times the detection threshold of each component line. Unlike the results for abutting targets, Vernier thresholds for nonabutting targets worsen with velocity as well as gap size. The results for abutting Vernier targets are consistent with the hypothesis that thresholds are mediated by oriented spatial filters, whose responses increase proportionally with the stimulus contrast. The velocity-dependent thresholds found for nonabutting Vernier targets can be explained on the basis of local-sign comparisons if the comparison process is assumed to include a small amount of temporal noise.

Progress and paradigm shifts in spatial vision over the 20 years of ECVP

In the beginning there was light, and form, and visual mechanisms. This paper traces developments in research on spatial vision over the 20 years of ECVP, with particular emphasis on (1) hyperacuity, (2) peripheral vision, (3) amblyopia and development, and (4) learning and plasticity.

Attentional control of spatial scale: effects on self-organized motion patterns

Prior to the presentation of a test stimulus, subjects' attentional state was either narrowly focused on a particular location or broadly spread over a large spatial region. In previous studies, it was found that broadly spread attention enhances the sensitivity of relatively large spatial filters (increasing the perceiver's spatial scale), thereby diminishing spatial resolution and enhancing sensitivity to global stimulus structure. In this study it is shown that attentional spread also affects the self-organization of unidirectional versus oscillatory motion patterns for the directionally ambiguous, counterphase presentation of rows of evenly-spaced visual elements (lines segments; dots); i.e. qualitatively different motion patterns can be formed for the same stimulus at different spatial scales. Although the degree to which attention is spread along a spatial axis can be controlled by the perceiver, the effects of spread attention are not limited to a single axis. These results, as well as previously observed effects of attentional spread on spatial resolution, are accounted for by a neural model involving large, foveally-centered receptive fields with co-operatively interacting subunits (probably at the level of MST or higher).

Vernier and letter acuities for low-pass filtered moving stimuli

Vernier and letter acuities are both susceptible to degradation by image motion. In a previous study, we showed that the worsening of Vernier acuity for stimuli moving up to 4 degrees/s is accounted for primarily by a shift of visual sensitivity to mechanisms of lower spatial frequency. The purposes of this study were to extend the previous results for Vernier acuity to higher stimulus contrast and velocities, and to determine if a shift in spatial scale can similarly explain the degradation of letter acuity for moving stimuli. We measured Vernier discrimination for a pair of vertical abutting thin lines and letter resolution for a four-orientation letter 'T' as a function of stimulus velocity ranging from 0 to 12 degrees/s. Stimuli were presented at 20 times the detection threshold, determined for each velocity. To determine the spatial-frequency mechanism that mediates each task at each velocity, we measured Vernier and letter acuities with low-pass filtered stimuli (cut-off spatial-frequency: 17.1-1.67 c/deg) and analyzed the data using an equivalent blur analysis. Our results show that the empirically determined, equivalent intrinsic blur associated with both tasks increases as a function of stimulus velocity, suggesting corresponding increases in the size of optimally responding mechanisms. This progressive increase in mechanism size can account for the worsening of Vernier and letter acuities with velocity. Vernier discrimination is found to be more susceptible to degradation by various stimulus parameters than letter resolution, suggesting that different mechanisms are involved in the two tasks. We conclude that the elevations in Vernier and letter acuities for moving stimuli are the consequence of a shift of visual sensitivity toward mechanisms of lower spatial frequencies.

Moving vernier in amblyopic and peripheral vision: greater tolerance to motion blur

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis that higher stimulus velocities could be tolerated in amblyopic and normal peripheral vision. The basis for this hypothesis is that a shift in the spatial scale of processing appears to account for the degradation in vernier acuity for moving stimuli in normal vision, and, to a large degree for the degradation in vernier acuity for stationary stimuli in amblyopic and peripheral vision. Vernier thresholds were determined using a pair of long abutting lines, for velocities ranging between 0 and 8 deg/sec. Comparisons were made between non-amblyopic and amblyopic eyes in two amblyopic observers, and between central and peripheral (5 and 10 deg) vision in two normal observers. We analyzed our threshold vs velocity data using an equivalent noise analysis, and defined the knee of the function, the point at which vernier threshold is elevated by a factor of square root of 2, as the "critical velocity" beyond which image motion degrades vernier acuity. Critical velocities were found to be higher in amblyopic than in nonamblyopic eyes; and higher in peripheral than central vision. Our results are consistent with the predictions from the shift in spatial scale notion--that higher velocity of image motion can be tolerated because of the shift in sensitivity toward lower spatial-frequency filter mechanisms in amblyopic and normal peripheral vision.

The effect of attentional spread on spatial resolution

The effects of attentional spread were studied by having subjects detect a luminance increment along a row of evenly spaced dots. The increment could occur for the central, fixated dot (Narrow Attention) or for either the fixation dot or one of the four dots to its left or right (Broad Attention). Narrow Attention enhanced the detection of luminance increments for the fixated dot, and also enhanced spatial resolution near the fixation dot for judgments of vernier alignment and separation. This indicated that the sensitivity of small spatial filters in the fovea was increased more by narrowly focused than broadly spread attention. Effects of attentional spread on spatial resolution were not obtained for judgments of the separation between two peripherally located targets, perhaps because of their dependence on eccentricity (position) rather than separation.

Ricco's diameter for line detection increases with stimulus velocity

The purpose of this study was to determine whether Ricco's diameter, the spatial extent within which sensitivity demonstrates a perfect reciprocity between contrast and area, enlarges as the stimulus velocity increases. Detection thresholds were measured for a single line of length 10 arcmin as a function of linewidth that varied between 0.31 and 21.7 arcmin and for velocity ranging from 0 to 6 deg/s. We fitted the detection threshold versus linewidth data with two power functions of slope 0 and 1 and defined the intersection of these two functions as Ricco's diameter. For an increase in velocity from 0 to 6 deg/s, Ricco's diameter increases in dimension by approximately a factor of 4. Similar results were obtained when Ricco's diameter was estimated by comparing detection threshold of a thin line to that of an edge. The increase in Ricco's diameter with stimulus velocity suggests that the spatial-frequency mechanism that mediates line detection shifts progressively toward lower spatial frequencies for faster moving stimuli.