Abstract
Purpose: On the Motion-Induced Blindness (MIB), the target is identified as the perceptual or artificial scotoma. The question is whether the scotoma permits the area to filling-in. We devised an artificial scotoma which subtended 5 degree or more induced by the repeated transilient changes of the inducer and examined the filling-ins.
Methods: Experiment 1: At the upper and lower 7 degree eccentric positions, the 2 green filled circles of 7 degree diameter were presented which would eventually disappear on the red background. The inducer was the unfilled white circles which shrank smoothly from 11 degree diameter to 9 degree in one second and jumped back to 11 degree. Experiment 2: The background was composed of gray and black areas. The left and right half or the inside and outside of the center circle of 7 degree radius were examined. Experiment 3: The white vertical meridian line and the unfilled circle of 7 degree radius which passed under the centers of the targets were presented. Experiment 4: The many vertical lines or the dynamic random dots which were the optimal stimuli for filling-in were examined.
Results: The targets were disappeared spontaneously after several second adaptation. Experiment 1: The color fill-in was positive and worked instantaneously. Experiment 2: The subjects reported an ambiguous boarder between filled-in gray and black area. Experiment 3 The line segments were never connected in the target area after the disappearance. Experiment 4: The filling-ins were totally negative. Subjects observed uniform black areas. The failure of the line segments filling-in would be due to the large size of the targets. The negative texture filling-in could lead a conjecture that they would really need a few seconds observation.
Conclusions: We found that any uniform color would fill-in, Neither the simple line segments passing under the targets nor the fine textures could never fill-in.