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Derek H Arnold

Publications and source records attributed to Derek H Arnold.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

Motion-induced spatial conflict.

Borders defined by small changes in brightness (luminance contrast) or by differences in colour (chromatic contrast) appear to move more slowly than those defined by strong luminance contrast. As spatial coding is influenced by motion, if placed in close proximity, the different types of moving border might appear to drift apart. Using this configuration, we show here that observers instead report a clear illusory spatial jitter of the low-luminance-contrast boundary. This visible interaction between motion and spatial-position coding occurred at a characteristic rate (approximately 22.3 Hz), although the stimulus motion was continuous and invariant. The jitter rate did not vary with the speed of movement. The jitter was not due to small involuntary movements of the eyes, because it only occurred at a specific point within the stimulus, the low-luminance-contrast boundary. These findings show that the human visual system contains a neural mechanism that periodically resolves the spatial conflict created by adjacent moving borders that have the same physical but different perceptual speeds.

Color↗

A paradox of temporal perception revealed by a stimulus oscillating in colour and orientation.

Psychophysical experiments with stimuli oscillating concurrently in colour and orientation revealed an apparently paradoxical dissociation between the perceived simultaneity of stimulus changes and the perceptual pairing of the events demarked by those changes. When subjects were required to report whether changes in colour and orientation were simultaneous, judgements were generally accurate within +/-10 ms. When subjects were required to report which colour was paired predominantly with which orientation, judgements showed a systematic temporal bias of up to 50 ms in favour of colour. This dissociation between different temporal judgements concerning the same stimulus sequence is not predicted by any of the current models of binding in conscious vision. We propose an account of these data based on the temporal response properties of colour- and orientation-selective model neurons such that the perceived pairing of visual attributes is modelled as the cross-correlation of time-varying neural response profiles and thus reflects both neuronal latencies and the rate of rapid adaptation rather than simply the temporal pattern of responses to stimulus transitions.

Color↗

Latency differences and the flash-lag effect.

The tendency for briefly flashed stimuli to appear to lag behind the spatial position of physically aligned moving stimuli is known as the flash-lag effect. Possibly the simplest explanation for this phenomenon is that transient stimuli are processed more slowly than moving stimuli. We tested this proposal using a task based upon the simultaneous tilt illusion. When an oriented stimulus is surrounded by another oriented stimulus, the inner stimulus can appear to be rotated away from the orientation of the surround. By flashing central static sinewave gratings at specific phases of an annular gratings rotation cycle, we were able to determine the temporal dependence of the tilt illusion. Our results suggest a small, approximately 20 ms, processing advantage for the rotating stimulus relative to the flashed stimulus. Such a small advantage, if due to differential latencies, is insufficient to account for the flash-lag effect.

Humans↗

Determinants of asynchronous processing in vision.

When a stimulus oscillates in both colour and direction of motion, changes in colour must lag behind those in direction if they are to be seen as concurrent. It has been argued that this lag is the consequence of asynchronous visual processing, with colour being processed more rapidly than motion. This proposal is contentious: it has been criticized on the basis that the time-course of cortical activity may not correlate directly with that of perceptual experience. Here, we demonstrate that the extent of the apparent asynchrony can vary according to the prevailing stimulus conditions. The apparent asynchrony is greatest if the stimulus is composed of opponent directions of motion and is reduced if the angular difference between the directions is reduced. This pattern of results suggests that asynchronous neural activity arises, in part, as a consequence of differential levels of inhibition within relatively independent cortical structures.

Color Perception↗