Document Detail


What is noise for the motion system?
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  8917818     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
Motion coherence thresholds in random-dot patterns have been widely adopted as a measure of performance in visual motion processing. However, there has been diversity in the type of "noise" in which a coherent motion signal has to be detected. Here we compare coherence thresholds for three ways of creating motion noise: dots replotted in random positions in each new frame; dots with a set displacement but following a random walk from frame to frame; or dots moving in random directions which remain constant for a given dot over a sequence of displacements. In each case, the signal dots may either remain the same throughout the display sequence, or the signal dots may be re-selected afresh on each frame ("different"). With our display (3 deg square, 120 msec exposure, velocity = 5 or 10 deg sec-1), all these different noise conditions yielded similar thresholds around 5-8%. There were some small but systematic differences between conditions. Thresholds in random-direction displays were consistently higher than those in random-walk or random-position displays, especially at the lower velocity. However, this effect is much smaller than would be expected from the increased standard error of the noise mean in random direction, perhaps because the motion system integrates information most effectively over a local region of space and/or time. Subjects" performance could not be explained by a strategy of identifying individual signal dots with extended trajectories. The similarity between random-walk and random-position thresholds implies that subjects do not exploit the marked differences in speed distribution between signal and noise dots in the latter case. The practical message for the design and interpretation of experiments using coherence thresholds is that the results are not much affected by the choice of noise, at least within the range of stimuli tested here.
Authors:
M O Scase; O J Braddick; J E Raymond
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Clinical Trial; Controlled Clinical Trial; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Vision research     Volume:  36     ISSN:  0042-6989     ISO Abbreviation:  Vision Res.     Publication Date:  1996 Aug 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  1996-12-11     Completed Date:  1996-12-11     Revised Date:  2006-11-15    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  0417402     Medline TA:  Vision Res     Country:  ENGLAND    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  2579-86     Citation Subset:  IM; S    
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University College London, UK.
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Adult
Humans
Male
Motion Perception / physiology*
Pattern Recognition, Visual / physiology*
Sensory Thresholds / physiology
Time Factors

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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