Illusory Continuous Motion from Oscillating Positive-Negative Patterns: Implications for Motion Perception

A black and white (positive) grating pattern was superimposed in exact register on its own photographic negative. Four operations were repetitively applied to this positive pattern so that it moved fractionally to the right, grew dimmer, moved back to the left, and grew brighter again. This sequence produced a strong illusion of continuous apparent motion to the right for as long as the cycle was repeated. The small relative motion between the two patterns generated two new illusory effects: enhanced real movement (ERM) and reversed real movement (RRM). The dimming and brightening phases gave rise to reversed apparent movement (RAM). All three effects are attributed to spatial filtering by neural mechanisms, which shifts the effective position of the positive-negative contours.

[1]  R L Gregory,et al.  Visual Dissociations of Movement, Position, and Stereo Depth: Some Phenomenal Phenomena , 1983, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. A, Human experimental psychology.

[2]  S. Anstis,et al.  Phi movement as a subtraction process. , 1970, Vision research.

[3]  S. Anstis,et al.  Illusory reversal of visual depth and movement during changes of contrast , 1975, Vision Research.

[4]  Stuart Anstis,et al.  Reversed Depth from Positive and Negative Stereograms , 1975 .

[5]  E H Adelson,et al.  Spatiotemporal energy models for the perception of motion. , 1985, Journal of the Optical Society of America. A, Optics and image science.

[6]  M. Shadlen,et al.  Mechanisms of human motion perception revealed by a new cyclopean illusion. , 1986, Science.

[7]  J R Pomerantz,et al.  Models of illusory pausing and sticking. , 1982, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[8]  S. M. Axstis.  PHI MOVEMENT AS A SUBTRACTION PROCESS , 1970 .

[9]  S. Anstis.  The perception of apparent movement. , 1980, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[10]  A technique for generating moving visual stimuli on a C.R.O. , 1976, Vision Research.

[11]  B Moulden,et al.  Some Tests of the Marr-Ullman Model of Movement Detection , 1986, Perception.