Abstract
Adaptation to visual motion diminishes the ability to see motion in the adapted direction. Attention enhances the processing of a motion stimulus after adaptation. We investigated effects of direction adaptation and attention on a motion discrimination task to determine if an interaction could occur. Participants maintained central fixation while two patches of 80 moving dots (one standard, one test) were briefly presented to the left and right of fixation. The standard always had 50% motion coherence, while the test varied from 10%–90% in steps of 10% coherence. Subjects reported the direction of movement (up or down) of the more coherent patch. To manipulate adaptation, a 100% coherent motion stimulus was shown for 3 secs before the discrimination stimuli and moved in either the same or opposite direction as the following patch. Large dots serving as uninformative exogenous cues were shown for 50 msecs before the discrimination task at fixation, next to the test, or the standard patch. We found no evidence for an interaction between attention and adaptation.