Abstract
Recently, we found that sustained spatial attention increases temporal integration using the feature fusion paradigm. In the current study, we examined the effect of transient attention on temporal integration using a modified version of the Ternus display. In a typical Ternus display horizontally aligned disks are shifted by one position across alternating frames that are separated by a varying inter-frame interval. This display can induce two different motion percepts: one may perceive either three disks moving together (group motion) or two central static disks and an outer disk that jumps across them (element motion). Several studies suggested that spatial and temporal integration underlie these two motion percepts. According to this notion, element motion reflects temporal integration while group motion reflects spatial integration. We used a modified Ternus display, consisting of three frames with no inter-frame interval and oriented Gabor patches as elements. Temporal integration was manipulated by varying orientation similarity across frames. The orientation difference between the two frames varied between 0°- 45°. In the cued condition, a peripheral cue – a small bar – attracted transient spatial attention in advance to the patches location. In the neutral condition, a cue composed of four small bars did not indicate a location. Observers had to report which of the two motion percepts was perceived. As expected, the percentage of element motion report increased as the orientation difference between the frames decreased, supporting the hypothesis that element motion is mediated by temporal integration. Critically, we found a higher percentage of element motion report in the cued condition than the neutral condition. These results suggest that transient attention, like sustained attention, enhances temporal integration. We are currently also varying the intra-frame orientation difference with this version of the Ternus display to examine the effect of transient attention on both spatial and temporal integration.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2017