Separate requirements for detection and perceptual stability of motion in interocular suppression

Abstract In interocular masking, a stimulus presented to one eye (the mask) is made stronger in order to suppress from awareness the target stimulus presented to the other eye. We investigated whether matching the features of the target and the mask would lead to more effective suppression (feature-...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Egor Ananyev, Trevor B. Penney, Po-Jang (Brown) Hsieh
Format: article
Language:EN
Published: Nature Portfolio 2017
Subjects:
R
Q
Online Access:https://doaj.org/article/8cefb6d9f9784be4954a70cf4269f8e7
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Abstract In interocular masking, a stimulus presented to one eye (the mask) is made stronger in order to suppress from awareness the target stimulus presented to the other eye. We investigated whether matching the features of the target and the mask would lead to more effective suppression (feature-selective suppression), or not (i.e., non-selective suppression). To control the temporal characteristics of the stimuli, we used a dynamic interocular mask to suppress a moving target, and found that neither matching speed nor pattern of motion led to more effective suppression. Instead, a faster target was detected faster, regardless of the mask type or speed, while a relatively slow (about 1°/s) mask was more perceptually stable (i.e., maintained suppression longer) in a non-selective fashion. While the requirement for target detectability, i.e., salience, is well characterized, relatively little attention is given to the factors that make a mask percept more perceptually stable. Based on these results, we argue that there are separate requirements for detection and perceptual stability.