Asymmetry in the perception of motion-in-depth
Shirai N. & Yamaguchi M.K.

Department of psychology, Chuo University, Tokyo, JAPAN

Abstract
We investigated the anisotropic responses between the detection of motion toward and motion away from the observers with expanding/contracting shaded circles. Our experiments followed visual search paradigm with two exceptions; (1) the stimulus presentation time was fixed for 300msec and (2) the mean error rates were adopted as a dependent variable. In Experiment 1, targets and distractors were defined by expanding (or contracting) convex/concave circles. Results of Experiment 1 suggested that the human visual system is more sensitive to expanding-convex circles (which create the impression of approaching objects) than others. In Experiment 2, the targets and distractors were defined by expanding (or contracting) step gradient (top-lighting/bottom-lighting) circles. The results of Experiment 2 suggested that the anisotropy for the perception of motion in depth should not be caused by change of luminance polarity but by change of shading cue.

- Click on the links down below to see the demonstrations of the stimuli from our paper entitled 'Asymmetry in the perception of motion-in-depth'.

Expanding target detection
+ Detection of an expanding convex target
+ Detection of an expanding concave target

Contracting target detection
+ Detection of a contracting convex target
+ Detection of a contracting concave target