Waves of visibility: probing the depth of inter-ocular suppression with transient and sustained targets.

In order to study non-conscious visual processing, researchers render otherwise consciously perceived images into invisible stimuli. Through the years, several psychophysical techniques have been developed for this purpose. Yet the comparison of experimental results across techniques remains a difficult task as the depth of suppression depends on the interactions between the type of stimuli and the suppression methods employed.

Motion words selectively modulate direction discrimination sensitivity for threshold motion.

Can speech selectively modulate the sensitivity of a sensory system so that, in the presence of a suitable linguistic context, the discrimination of certain perceptual features becomes more or less likely? In this study, participants heard upward or downward motion words followed by a single visual field of random dots moving upwards or downwards. The time interval between the onsets of the auditory and the visual stimuli was varied parametrically. Motion direction could be either discriminable (suprathreshold motion) or non-discriminable (threshold motion).

The role of stationary and dynamic test patterns in rapid forms of motion after-effect.

Subsecond adaptation to directional motion can induce a rapid form of motion after-effect (rMAE). Unlike the characteristics of the classic motion after-effect (MAE), produced by adaptation of several seconds or minutes, the properties of the rMAE have been less well explored. In a series of experiments, we assessed the role of stationary and dynamic test patterns (counterphase flickering gratings) in generating rMAE.