Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-11-21DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108338
Krishnamachari S. Prahalad , Daniel R. Coates
{"title":"Alterations to foveal crowding with microsaccade preparation","authors":"Krishnamachari S. Prahalad , Daniel R. Coates","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108338","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108338","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span><span>Visual stimuli presented around the time of a </span>saccade<span> have been shown to be perceived differently by the visual system, including a reduction in the harmful impact of flankers (crowding). However, whether the effects observed are due strictly to crowding remains controversial, and the effects have only been measured with large saccades in peripheral vision. Here we investigate how crowded stimuli placed 20 arc minutes from the center of gaze are affected by an upcoming </span></span>microsaccade. The stimulus consisted of a rotated T of size 6.25 arcminutes that was either unflanked, surrounded by four flankers (Experiment 1), or surrounded by two flankers that were positioned either radially or tangentially (Experiments 2 and 3). In 80 % of trials, subjects made voluntary microsaccades to the target when cued, and in the remaining 20 % of the trials subjects continued to maintain fixation. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects were required to saccade to the same location as the target, while in Experiment 3 subjects saccaded to a different location ∼ 20 arc min to the upper left of the target. Thus, we provide evidence for two separable pre-saccadic benefits for crowded parafoveal targets: one isotropizes the crowding zone for stimuli presented 200 to 125 ms before microsaccadic onset, and another provides a benefit exclusively for microsaccade targets surrounded by tangential flankers in the presence of imminent microsaccades. Two possible mechanisms are attentional enhancement and predictive remapping of receptive fields, respectively.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138291935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-11-10DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108329
Chandrika Ravisankar , Christopher W. Tyler , Clifton M. Schor , Shrikant R. Bharadwaj
{"title":"Success rates, near-response patterns, and learning trends with free-fusion stereograms","authors":"Chandrika Ravisankar , Christopher W. Tyler , Clifton M. Schor , Shrikant R. Bharadwaj","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2023.108329","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Free-fusion stereograms are routinely used for demonstrating various stereoscopic effects. Yet, untrained observers find it challenging to perform this task. This study showed that only less than 1/3rd of sixty-one pre-presbyopic adults with normal binocular vision could successfully free-fuse random-dot image pairs and identify the stereoscopic shapes embedded in these patterns. Another one-third of participants performed the task with poor success rates, while the remaining could not perform the task. There was a clear dissociation of vergence and accommodative responses in participants who were successful with free-fusion, as recorded using a dynamic infrared eye tracker and photorefractor. Those in the unsuccessful cluster either showed strong vergence and accommodation or weak vergence and strong accommodation during the task. These response patterns, however, were specific to the free-fusion task because all these participants generated good convergence/accommodation to real-world targets and to conflicting vergence and accommodative demands stimulated with prisms or lenses. Task performance of the unsuccessful cluster also improved significantly following pharmacological paralysis of accommodation and reached the performance levels of the successful cluster. A minority of participants also appeared to progressively learn to dissociate one of the two directions of their vergence and accommodation crosslinks with repeated free-fusion trials. These results suggest that successful free-fusion might depend upon how well participants generate a combination of volitional and reflex vergence responses to large differences in disparity with conflicting static accommodative demands. Such responses would require that only one direction of the vergence-accommodation crosslinks be active at any given time. The sequence of near-responses could also be learnt through repeated trials to optimize task performance.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91728175","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-11-04DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108328
Hilal Nizamoglu , Burcu A. Urgen
{"title":"Neural processing of bottom-up perception of biological motion under attentional load","authors":"Hilal Nizamoglu , Burcu A. Urgen","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108328","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108328","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Considering its importance for one’s survival and social significance, biological motion (BM) perception is assumed to occur automatically. Previous behavioral results showed that task-irrelevant BM in the periphery interfered with task performance at the fovea. Under selective attention, BM perception is supported by a network of regions including the occipito-temporal (OTC), parietal, and premotor cortices<span><span>. Retinotopy studies that use BM stimulus showed distinct maps for its processing under and away from selective attention. Based on these findings, we investigated how bottom-up perception of BM would be processed in the human brain under attentional load when it was shown away from the focus of attention as a task-irrelevant stimulus. Participants (N = 31) underwent an fMRI study in which they performed an attentionally demanding visual detection task at the fovea while intact or scrambled point light displays of BM were shown at the periphery. Our results showed the main effect of attentional load in fronto-parietal regions and both univariate activity maps and multivariate pattern analysis results support the attentional load modulation on the task-irrelevant peripheral stimuli. However, this effect was not specific to intact BM stimuli and was generalized to motion stimuli as evidenced by the motion-sensitive </span>OTC involvement during the presence of dynamic stimuli in the periphery. These results confirm and extend previous work by showing that task-irrelevant distractors can be processed by stimulus-specific regions when there are enough attentional resources available. We discussed the implications of these results for future studies.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71486608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108276
Chen Chen , Vanessa G. Lee
{"title":"Looking away to see: The acquisition of a search habit away from the saccade direction","authors":"Chen Chen , Vanessa G. Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108276","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108276","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Growing evidence has shown that attention can be habit-like, unconsciously and persistently directed toward locations that have frequently contained search targets in the past. The attentional preference typically arises when the eye gaze aligns with the attended location. Here we tested whether this spatial alignment is necessary for the acquisition of a search habit. To divert eye movements away from an attended location, we used gaze-contingent eye tracking, restricting the visible portion of the screen to an area opposite to the current gaze. Participants searched for a T target amidst a circular array of L distractors. Unbeknownst to them, the target appeared more frequently in one screen quadrant. Despite fixating on a location diametrically opposite to the visible, attended region, participants acquired probability cuing, producing quicker responses when the target appeared in the high-probability quadrant. They also showed a speed advantage in the diagonal quadrant. The attentional preference for the high-probability quadrant persisted during a testing phase in which the target’s location was unbiased, but only when participants continued to search with the restricted view. These results indicate that a search habit can be acquired even when participants are required to look away from the high-probability locations. The finding suggests that the learned search habit is not solely a result of oculomotor learning.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9972293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108278
Antoine Prosper , Martina Pasqualetti , Maria Concetta Morrone , Claudia Lunghi
{"title":"The duration effect of short-term monocular deprivation measured by binocular rivalry and binocular combination","authors":"Antoine Prosper , Martina Pasqualetti , Maria Concetta Morrone , Claudia Lunghi","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108278","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108278","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The ocular dominance shift observed after short-term monocular deprivation is a widely used measure of visual homeostatic plasticity in adult humans. Binocular rivalry and binocular combination techniques are used interchangeably to characterize homeostatic plasticity, sometimes leading to contradictory results. Here we directly compare the effect of short-term monocular deprivation on ocular dominance measured by either binocular rivalry or binocular combination and its dependence on the duration of deprivation (15 or 120 min) in the same group of participants. Our results show that both binocular rivalry and binocular combination provide reliable estimates of ocular dominance, which are strongly correlated across techniques both before and after deprivation. Moreover, while 15 min of monocular deprivation induce a larger shift of ocular dominance when measured using binocular combination compared to binocular rivalry, for both techniques, the shift in ocular dominance exhibits a strong dependence on the duration of monocular deprivation, with longer deprivation inducing a larger and longer-lasting shift in ocular dominance. Taken together, our results indicate that both binocular rivalry and binocular combination offer very consistent and reliable measurements of both ocular dominance and the effect short-term monocular deprivation.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9978802","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108280
Quan Lei , Adam Reeves
{"title":"Numerosity depends on normalized contrast energy: Review and square-root law model","authors":"Quan Lei , Adam Reeves","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108280","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108280","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The perceived numerosity of many randomly-located items of fixed contrast depends on the integrated contrast energy (CE) of the display. We show here that a model based on √(CE), normalized by contrast amplitude, can fit numerosity judgment data in various tasks and over a wide range of numerosities. The model shows that judged numerosity increases linearly with √(N), where N is the number of displayed items above the subitization range, and can explain: 1) the general underestimation in absolute judgement of numerosity; 2) the contrast independence (constancy) of numerosity judgment in segregated displays, i.e., judged numerosities are not affected by item contrast; 2) a contrast-dependent illusion where the numerosity of higher-contrast items is further underestimated when intermingled with lower-contrast items; and 3) both the threshold and sensitivity of numerosity discrimination between displays of N and M items. The nearly perfect fit of numerosity judgment data by a square-root law over a wide range of numerosities, including the range typically described by Weber’s law, but excluding subitization, suggests that normalized contrast energy might be the prevailing sensory code underlying numerosity perception.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9978811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108275
Emil Skog , C. Stella Qian , Anisha Parmar, Andrew J. Schofield
{"title":"What surprises the Mona Lisa? The relative importance of the eyes and eyebrows for detecting surprise in briefly presented face stimuli","authors":"Emil Skog , C. Stella Qian , Anisha Parmar, Andrew J. Schofield","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108275","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108275","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The classification image (CI) technique has been used to derive templates for judgements of facial emotion and reveal which facial features inform specific emotional judgements. For example, this method has been used to show that detecting an up- or down-turned mouth is a primary strategy for discriminating happy versus sad expressions. We explored the detection of surprise using CIs, expecting widened eyes, raised eyebrows, and open mouths to be dominant features. We briefly presented a photograph of a female face with a neutral expression embedded in random visual noise, which modulated the appearance of the face on a trial-by-trial basis. In separate sessions, we showed this face with or without eyebrows to test the importance of the raised eyebrow element of surprise. Noise samples were aggregated into CIs based on participant responses. Results show that the eye-region was most informative for detecting surprise. Unless attention was specifically directed to the mouth, we found no effects in the mouth region. The eye effect was stronger when the eyebrows were absent, but the eyebrow region was not itself informative and people did not infer eyebrows when they were missing. A follow-up study was conducted in which participants rated the emotional valence of the neutral images combined with their associated CIs. This verified that CIs for ‘surprise’ convey surprised expressions, while also showing that CIs for ‘not surprise’ convey disgust. We conclude that the eye-region is important for the detection of surprise.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10353203","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vision ResearchPub Date : 2023-10-01DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2023.108208
Annegret Meermeier , Markus Lappe , Yuanhao H. Li , Katharina Rifai , Siegfried Wahl , Michele Rucci
{"title":"Fine-scale measurement of the blind spot borders","authors":"Annegret Meermeier , Markus Lappe , Yuanhao H. Li , Katharina Rifai , Siegfried Wahl , Michele Rucci","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108208","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108208","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The blind spot is both a necessity and a nuisance for seeing. It is the portion of the visual field projecting to where the optic nerve crosses the retina, a region devoid of photoreceptors<span> and hence visual input. The precise way in which vision transitions into blindness at the blind spot border is to date unknown. A chief challenge to map this transition is the incessant movement of the eye, which unavoidably smears measurements across space. In this study, we used high-resolution eye-tracking and state-of-the-art retinal stabilization to finely map the blind spot borders. Participants reported the onset of tiny high-contrast probes that were briefly flashed at precise positions around the blind spot. This method has sufficient resolution to enable mapping of blood vessels from psychophysical measurements. Our data show that, even after accounting for eye movements, the transition zones at the edges of the blind spot are considerable. On the horizontal meridian, the regions with detection rates between 80% and 20% span approximately 25% of the overall width of the blind spot. These borders also vary considerably in size across different axes. These data show that the transition from full visibility to blindness at the blind spot border is not abrupt but occurs over a broad area.</span></p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10494866/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10205352","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Detection of emotional faces: The role of spatial frequencies and local features","authors":"Léa Entzmann , Nathalie Guyader , Louise Kauffmann , Carole Peyrin , Martial Mermillod","doi":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108281","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.visres.2023.108281","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>Models of emotion processing suggest that threat-related stimuli such as fearful faces can be detected based on the rapid extraction of low spatial frequencies. However, this remains debated as other models argue that the decoding of facial expressions occurs with a more flexible use of spatial frequencies. The purpose of this study was to clarify the role of spatial frequencies and differences in luminance contrast between spatial frequencies, on the detection of facial emotions. We used a saccadic choice task in which emotional-neutral face pairs were presented and participants were asked to make a saccade toward the neutral or the emotional (happy or fearful) face. Faces were displayed either in low, high, or broad spatial frequencies. Results showed that participants were better to saccade toward the emotional face. They were also better for high or broad than low spatial frequencies, and the accuracy was higher with a happy target. An analysis of the eye and mouth saliency of</span> <!-->our stimuli revealed that the mouth saliency of the target correlates with participants’ performance. Overall, this study underlines the importance of local more than global information, and of the saliency of the mouth region in the detection of emotional and neutral faces.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":23670,"journal":{"name":"Vision Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9972306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}