Distance perception during self-movement.

The perception of distance in open fields was widely studied with static observers. However, it is a fact that we and the world around us are in continuous relative movement, and that our perceptual experience is shaped by the complex interactions between our senses and the perception of our self-motion. This poses interesting questions about how our nervous system integrates this multisensory information to resolve specific tasks of our daily life, for example, distance estimation.

Position Affects Performance in Multiple-Object Tracking in Rugby Union Players.

We report an experiment that examines the performance of rugby union players and a control group composed of graduate student with no sport experience, in a multiple-object tracking task. It compares the ability of 86 high level rugby union players grouped as Backs and Forwards and the control group, to track a subset of randomly moving targets amongst the same number of distractors. Several difficulties were included in the experimental design in order to evaluate possible interactions between the relevant variables.

The effect of object familiarity on the perception of motion.

Humans are capable of picking up the invariance of an object's physical speed regardless of the distance from which it is seen. This ability is known as speed constancy. Typically the studies of speed constancy focus on the spatiotemporal cues present in the stimulus.

Effect of glare on reaction time for peripheral vision at mesopic adaptation.

When a bright light is present in the field of view, visibility is dramatically reduced. Many studies have investigated the effect of glare on visibility considering foveal vision. However, the effects on peripheral vision have received little attention.

The effect of chromatic and luminance information on reaction times.

We present a series of experiments exploring the effect of chromaticity on reaction time (RT) for a variety of stimulus conditions, including chromatic and luminance contrast, luminance, and size. The chromaticity of these stimuli was varied along a series of vectors in color space that included the two chromatic-opponent-cone axes, a red-green (L-M) axis and a blue-yellow [S - (L + M)] axis, and intermediate noncardinal orientations, as well as the luminance axis (L + M). For Weber luminance contrasts above 10-20%, RTs tend to the same asymptote, irrespective of chromatic direction.

Learning motion: human vs. optimal Bayesian learner.

We used the optimal perceptual learning paradigm (Eckstein, Abbey, Pham, & Shimozaki, 2004) to investigate the dynamics of human rapid learning processes in motion discrimination tasks and compare it to an optimal Bayesian learner. This paradigm consists of blocks of few trials defined by a set of target attributes, and it has been shown its ability to detect learning effects appearing as soon as after the first trial. In the present task a sequence consisting of four patches containing random-dot patterns is presented at four separate locations equidistant from a fixation point.

The effect of spatial layout on motion segmentation.

We present a series of experiments exploring the effect of the stimulus spatial configuration on speed discrimination and two different types of segmentation, for random dot patterns. In the first experiment, we find that parsing the image produces a decrease of speed discrimination thresholds such as was first shown by Verghese and Stone [Verghese, P., & Stone, L.

Speed adaptation as Kalman filtering.

If the purpose of adaptation is to fit sensory systems to different environments, it may implement an optimization of the system. What the optimum is depends on the statistics of these environments. Therefore, the system should update its parameters as the environment changes.

Effect of glare on simple reaction time.

We systematized the study of the effect of glare on reaction time (RT), for visual conditions similar to the ones found during night driving: Mesopic range of adaptation (0.14 cd/m2), glare levels of the order of those produced by car headlights (E(G)=15, 60 lx), suprathreshold luminance contrasts, and a variety of spatial frequencies covering the selected range of visibility (1, 2, 4, and 8 c/deg). We found that for the no-glare situation, RT increases with decreasing contrast and increasing spatial frequency, which agrees with previous findings.

Vernier acuity of illusory contours defined by motion.

We present here a series of experiments exploring a special class of visual completion that is strictly tied to the perception of apparent motion. The stimuli consist of sparse random-dot arrays, in which dots remain in place. Changes of luminance or color of the dots at leading and trailing edges of an apparently moving region are integrated over space and time to produce the perception of well-defined contours, shapes, and color.

Time course of brightness under transient glare condition.

It was shown that a peripheral glare source reduces the brightness of a foveal stimulus. We hypothesized that this brightness reduction is governed by an inhibitory effect of the glare source on the test. We reported the results of an investigation of the dynamic of brightness reduction of an incremental stimulus immediately after the onset of a glare source in the field of view.

Measurement of rate of expansion in the perception of radial motion.

Optic flow generated by rigid surface patches can be decomposed into a small number of elementary motion types. In these experiments, we show that the human visual system can evaluate expansion, one of these motion types, metrically. Moreover, we show that the discrimination of rates of expansion are spatially local.

Parametric decomposition of optic flow by humans.

Ego motion and natural motions in the world generate complex optic flows in the retina. These optic flows, if produced by rigid surface patches, can be decomposed into four components, including rotation and expansion. We showed previously that humans can precisely estimate parameters of these components, such as the angular velocity of a rotational motion and the rate of expansion of a radial motion.

Local computation of angular velocity in rotational visual motion.

Retinal images evolve continuously over time owing to self-motions and to movements in the world. Such an evolving image, also known as optic flow, if arising from natural scenes can be locally decomposed in a Bayesian manner into several elementary components, including translation, expansion, and rotation. To take advantage of this decomposition, the brain has neurons tuned to these types of motions.

Temporal coherence in visual rotation.

The brain can predict and estimate motion based on visual translation. This paper addresses whether the visual system also has a specialized mechanism of temporal coherence for rotational motion. To do this, we measured the perceived mislocation of a rotating dot at the time of its luminance transition.

Measurement of angular velocity in the perception of rotation.

Humans are sensitive to the parameters of translational motion, namely, direction and speed. At the same time, people have special mechanisms to deal with more complex motions, such as rotations and expansions. One wonders whether people may also be sensitive to the parameters of these complex motions.