Color from Motion: Dichoptic Activation and a Possible Role in Breaking Camouflage

‘Color from motion’ describes the perception of a spread of subjective color over achromatic regions seen as moving. The effect can be produced in a display of multiple frames shown in quick succession, each frame consisting of a fixed, random placement of colored dots on a high-luminance white background with color assignments of some dots, but not dot locations, changing from frame to frame. Evidence is presented that the perception of apparent motion and the spread of subjective color can be activated by binocular combination of disjoint signals to each eye. The dichoptic presentation of every odd-numbered frame of the full stimulus sequence presented to one eye and, out of phase, every even-numbered frame to the other eye produces a compelling perception of color from motion equal to that seen with the full sequence presented to each eye alone. This is consistent with the idea that color from motion is regulated in sites at or beyond the convergence of monocular pathways. When the background field in the stimulus display is of low luminance, an amodally complete object, fully colored and matching the dots defining the moving region in hue and saturation, is seen to move behind a partially occluding screen. Observers do not perceive such an object in still view. Hence, color from motion can be used by the visual system to produce amodal completion, which suggests that it may play a role in enhancing the visibility of camouflaged objects.

[1]  H. Wallach.  On the visually perceived direction of motion ' ' by Hans Wallach : 60 years later , 1997 .

[2]  N. Fujita,et al.  Amodal Completion as Another Perception of Color-Spreading Stimuli , 1993, Perceptual and motor skills.

[3]  George A. Kaplan,et al.  Kinetic disruption of optical texture: The perception of depth at an edge , 1969 .

[4]  K Nakayama,et al.  Toward a neural understanding of visual surface representation. , 1990, Cold Spring Harbor symposia on quantitative biology.

[5]  P J Stappers,et al.  Forms Can Be Recognized from Dynamic Occlusion Alone , 1989, Perceptual and motor skills.

[6]  A. Michotte,et al.  Les compléments amodaux des structures perceptives , 1964 .

[7]  G J Andersen,et al.  Dynamic occlusion in the perception of rotation in depth , 1983, Perception & psychophysics.

[8]  C. M. Cicerone,et al.  Color from Motion: Separate Contributions of Chromaticity and Luminance , 1997, Perception.

[9]  K Nakayama,et al.  Experiencing and perceiving visual surfaces. , 1992, Science.

[10]  T. Albright,et al.  What happens if it changes color when it moves?: Psychophysical experiments on the nature of chromatic input to motion detectors , 1993, Vision Research.

[11]  V. Ramachandran,et al.  Transparency: Relation to Depth, Subjective Contours, Luminance, and Neon Color Spreading , 1990, Perception.

[12]  T F Shipley,et al.  Spatiotemporal boundary formation: boundary, form, and motion perception from transformations of surface elements. , 1994, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[13]  G J Andersen,et al.  2-D contour perception resulting from kinetic occlusion , 1989, Perception & psychophysics.

[14]  W. Newsome,et al.  Motion selectivity in macaque visual cortex. I. Mechanisms of direction and speed selectivity in extrastriate area MT. , 1986, Journal of neurophysiology.

[15]  Mark A. Georgeson,et al.  No evidence for dichoptic motion sensing: a reply to carney and shadlen , 1992, Vision Research.

[16]  Donald D. Hoffman,et al.  The perception of color from motion , 1995, Perception & psychophysics.

[17]  Hans Wallach.  Über visuell wahrgenommene Bewegungsrichtung , 1935 .

[18]  M. Wertheimer.  Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt. II , 1923 .

[19]  W. Newsome,et al.  Motion selectivity in macaque visual cortex. II. Spatiotemporal range of directional interactions in MT and V1. , 1986, Journal of neurophysiology.

[20]  S Grossberg,et al.  3-D vision and figure-ground separation by visual cortex , 2010, Perception & psychophysics.

[21]  H. V. Tuijl,et al.  A new visual illusion: Neonlike color spreading and complementary color induction between subjective contours , 1975 .

[22]  CHARLES E. BENHAM,et al.  The Artificial Spectrum Top , 1895, Nature.

[23]  J. Krauskopf,et al.  Influence of colour on the perception of coherent motion , 1990, Nature.

[24]  John C. Trueswell,et al.  Surface segmentation mechanisms and motion perception , 1993, Vision Research.

[25]  T F Shipley,et al.  Optical tearing in spatiotemporal boundary formation: when do local element motions produce boundaries, form, and global motion? , 1993, Spatial vision.

[26]  Shelford Bidwell.  On subjective colour phenomena attending sudden changes of illumination , 1897, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London.

[27]  Michael N. Shadlen,et al.  Dichoptic activation of the early motion system , 1993, Vision Research.

[28]  T. Albright,et al.  Image Segmentation Cues in Motion Processing: Implications for Modularity in Vision , 1993, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[29]  H. F. van Tuijl.  A new visual illusion: neonlike color spreading and complementary color induction between subjective contours. , 1975, Acta psychologica.

[30]  J. Gibson.  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception , 1979 .

[31]  K. D. De Valois,et al.  Higher-Order Factors Influencing the Perception of Sliding and Coherence of a Plaid , 1992, Perception.

[32]  W. B. Thompson,et al.  Relative motion: Kinetic information for the order of depth at an edge , 1987, Perception & psychophysics.

[33]  Max Wertheimer,et al.  Untersuchungen zur Lehre von der Gestalt , .

[34]  John H. R. Maunsell,et al.  How parallel are the primate visual pathways? , 1993, Annual review of neuroscience.

[35]  Bennett L. Schwartz,et al.  Interaction between Transparency and Structure from Motion , 1992, Neural Computation.

[36]  D. Gordon,et al.  The Prevost-Fechner-Benham subjective colors. , 1949, Psychological bulletin.

[37]  G. Fechner.  Ueber eine Scheibe zur Erzeugung subjectiver Farben , 1838 .