Phantom motion after-effect in crowding condition: the role of awareness and attention A Pavan, V Jurczyk, M W Greenlee |
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Institute for Experimental Psychology, University of Regensburg, Germany
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| Motion after-effect (MAE) is preserved in crowding conditions. This has been shown when adapting to first- and second-order drifting gratings [Whitney and Bressler, 2007, Vision Research, 47, 569–579] as well as complex moving patterns [i.e., optic flow components; Aghdaee, 2005, Perception, 34, 155-162]. In this experiment we used global moving random dot kinematograms (RDKs) to assess whether phantom MAE [i.e., adaptation to specific sectors of the visual field induces the perception of MAE in other (non-adapted) sectors; Snowden and Milne, 1997, Current Biology, 7, 717-722] is preserved in a crowding condition, when attention was focused on the crowded target (attention-not-distracted condition) and when attention was distracted from the target using a central RSVP task (attention-distracted condition). In the attention-not-distracted condition reliable phantom MAE was found following crowded adaptation. However, the introduction of the attentional task did not significantly affect the strength of the phantom MAE. These results suggest that high-level motion detectors can pool motion signals from different parts of the visual field in the absence of awareness and without top-down attentional control [Morgan, 2012, Vision Research, 55, 47-51]. |
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