Contribution of low-level motion to position shifts.

Motion can produce large changes in the apparent locations of briefly flashed tests presented on or near the motion. These motion-induced position shifts may have a variety of sources. They may be due to a frame effect where the moving pattern provides a frame of reference for the locations of events within it. The motion of the background may act through high-level mechanisms that track its explicit contours or the motion may act on position through the signals from low-level motion detectors. Here we isolate the contribution of low-level motion by eliminating explicit contours and trackable features. In this case, motion still supports a robust shift in probe locations with the shift being in the direction of the motion that follows the probe. Although robust, the magnitude of the shift in our first experiment is about 20% of the shift seen in a previous study with explicit frames and, in the second, about 45% of that found with explicit frames. Clearly, low-level motion alone can produce position shifts although the magnitude is much reduced compared to that seen when high-level mechanisms can contribute.

Influence of frame and probe paths on the frame effect.

Moving frames produce large displacements in the perceived location of flashed and continuously moving probes. In a series of experiments, we test the contributions of the probe's displacement and the frame's displacement on the strength of the frame's effect. In the first experiment, we find a dramatic position shift of flashed probes whereas the effect on a continuously moving probe is only one-third as strong. In Experiment 2, we show that the absence of an effect for the static probe is a consequence of its perceptual grouping with the static background. As long as the continuously present probe has some motion, it appears to group to some extent with the frame and show an illusory shift of intermediate magnitude. Finally, we informally explored the illusory shifts seen for a continuously moving probe when the frame itself has a more complex path. In this case, the probe appears to group more strongly with the frame. Overall, the effects of the frame on the probe demonstrate the outcome of a competition between the frame and the static background in determining the frame of reference for the probe's perceived position.

Motion-induced distortion of shape.

Motion, position, and form are intricately intertwined in perception. Motion distorts visual space, resulting in illusory position shifts such as flash-drag and flash-grab effects. The flash-grab displaces a test by up to several times its size. This lets us use it to investigate where the motion-induced shift operates in the processing stream from photoreceptor activation to feature activation to object recognition. We present several canonical, highly familiar forms and ask whether the motion-induced shift operates uniformly across the form. If it did, we could conclude that the effect occurred after the elements of the form are bound. However, we find that motion-induced distortion affects not only the position, but also the appearance of briefly presented, canonical shapes (square, circle, and letter T). Features of the flashed target that were closest to its center were shifted in the direction of motion more than those further from its center. Outline shapes were affected more than filled shapes, and the strength of the distortion increased with the contrast of the moving background. This not only supports a nonuniform spatial profile for the motion-induced shift but also indicates that the shift operates before the shape is established, even for highly familiar shapes like squares, circles, and letters.

Up is best.

Ambiguous patterns have a tendency to appear to point up. This bias makes sense as most objects are on the ground, pointing up. However, we discover that the source of the up bias is the preference for seeing depth receding from the lower to the upper visual field.

Exploring the frame effect.

Probes flashed within a moving frame are dramatically displaced (Özkan, Anstis, 't Hart, Wexler, & Cavanagh, 2021; Wong & Mack, 1981). The effect is much larger than that seen on static or moving probes (induced motion, Duncker, 1929; Wallach, Bacon, & Schulman, 1978). These flashed probes are often perceived with the separation they have in frame coordinates-a 100% effect (Özkan et al., 2021). Here, we explore this frame effect on flashed tests with several versions of the standard stimulus. We find that the frame effect holds for smoothly or abruptly displacing frames, even when the frame changed shape or orientation between the end points of its travel. The path could be nonlinear, even circular. The effect was driven by perceived not physical motion. When there were competing overlapping frames, the effect was determined by which frame was attended. There were a number of constraints that limited the effect. A static anchor near the flashes suppressed the effect but an extended static texture did not. If the probes were continuous rather than flashed, the effect was abolished. The observational reports of 30 online participants suggest that the frame effect is robust to many variations in its shape and path and leads to a perception of flashed tests in their locations relative to the frame as if the frame were stationary. Our results highlight the role of frame continuity and of the grouping of the flashes with the frame in generating the frame effect.

A motion-induced position shift that depends on motion both before and after the test probe.

Two versions of the flash grab illusion were used to examine the relative contributions of motion before and motion after the test flash to the illusory position shift. The stimulus in the first two experiments was a square pattern that expanded and contracted with an outline square flashed each time the motion reversed producing a dramatic difference in perceived size between the two reversals. Experiment 1 showed a strong illusion when motion was present before and after the flashed tests or just after the flashes, but no significant effect when only the pre-flash motion was present. In Experiment 2, motion always followed the flash, and the duration of the pre-flash motion was varied. The results showed a significant increase in illusion strength with the duration of pre-flash motion and the effect of the pre-flash motion was almost 50% that of the post-flash motion. Finally, Experiment 3 tested the position shifts when the linear motion of a disk before the flash was orthogonal to its motion after the flash. Here, the results again showed that the pre-flash motion made a significant contribution, about 32% that of the post-flash motion. Several models are considered and even though all fail to some degree, they do offer insights into the nature of the illusion. Finally, we show that the empirical measure of the relative contribution of motion before and after the flash can be used to distinguish the mechanisms underlying different illusions.

Paradoxical stabilization of relative position in moving frames.

To capture where things are and what they are doing, the visual system may extract the position and motion of each object relative to its surrounding frame of reference [K. Duncker, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London 161-172 (1929) and G. Johansson, Acta Psychol (Amst.) 7, 25-79 (1950)]. Here we report a particularly powerful example where a paradoxical stabilization is produced by a moving frame. We first take a frame that moves left and right and we flash its right edge before, and its left edge after, the frame's motion. For all frame displacements tested, the two edges are perceived as stabilized, with the left edge on the left and right edge on the right, separated by the frame's width as if the frame were not moving. This stabilization is paradoxical because the motion of the frame itself remains visible, albeit much reduced. A second experiment demonstrated that unlike other motion-induced position shifts (e.g., flash lag, flash grab, flash drag, or Fröhlich), the illusory shift here is independent of speed and is set instead by the distance of the frame's travel. In this experiment, two probes are flashed inside the frame at the same physical location before and after the frame moves. Despite being physically superimposed, the probes are perceived widely separated, again as if they were seen in the frame's coordinates and the frame were stationary. This paradoxical stabilization suggests a link to visual stability across eye movements where the displacement of the entire visual scene may act as a frame to stabilize the perception of relative locations.

Flashed Müller-Lyer and Poggendorff Virtual Illusions.

A moving frame can dramatically displace the perceived location of stimuli flashed before and after the motion. Here, we use a moving frame to rearrange flashed elements into the form of classic illusions. Without the moving frame, the initial arrangement of the flashed elements has no illusory effect. The question is whether the frame-induced displacement of position precedes or follows the processes underlying the illusions. This illusory offset of flashed chevrons does generate a Müller-Lyer illusion and the illusory offset of two line segments does create a Poggendorff illusion. We conclude that the site where the frame-induced position shift emerges must precede the site at which the Müller-Lyer and Poggendorf illusions arise.

The Paradox of Extreme Close-Up Gaze.

If somebody gazes at your left eye, you perceive them as looking straight at you. They switch their gaze with a single saccade to your right eye. You see their eyes move, yet they paradoxically end up still looking straight at you. Comparable paradoxical effects can arise when you view your own selfie image on a phone screen-but not when you look in a mirror.

Retinal Periphery Is Insensitive to Sudden Transient Motion.

Peripherally viewed targets moved around against a background of random dynamic noise. Slow movements were visible, fast movements were not. Thus, a target that repetitively drifted to the right and snapped back appeared to drift endlessly to the right with no visible snapbacks.

Salience-Based Edge Selection in Flicker and Binocular Color Vision.

A test cross that flickers between light yellow and dark blue at 5 to 8Hz looks apparently yellow on a dark gray surround and apparently blue on a light gray surround (flicker augmented contrast). The achromatic surround cannot be inducing the perceived colors. Instead, the visual system selects the more salient apparent color with the higher Michelson contrast. The same is true for dichoptic vision. When one eye views a steady, light yellow cross and the other eye views a congruent steady dark blue cross, the binocular combination of colors looks apparently yellow on a dark gray surround and apparently blue on a light gray surround. Thus, when competing stimuli are distributed over time (flicker) or space (dichoptic vision), the visual system overweights the stimulus with the higher contrast. To see objects clearly, we accept the best view of any object and downplay inferior alternatives.

Moving Backgrounds Confer Age-Related Positional Uncertainty on Flash-Grab Targets.

The flash-grab effect made a stationary flashing cross appear to jump back and forth through a distance of more than 2°. Observers were asked to move a cursor as quickly as possible on to this flashing target. All observers younger than 65 years, and 39% of those over 65 years, could do this without difficulty within 1 second to 2 seconds. But 61% of those over 65 years experienced uncertainty about the exact position of the target and took from 6 to 147 seconds to hit it-about 4 times longer than to hit an actually jumping cross. This loss of hand-eye coordination was probably perceptual, not motor.

Reversed Phi and the "Phenomenal Phenomena" Revisited.

Reversed apparent motion (or reversed phi) can be seen during a continuous dissolve between a positive and a spatially shifted negative version of the same image. Similar reversed effects can be seen in stereo when positive and spatially shifted negative images are presented separately to the two eyes or in a Vernier alignment task when the two images are juxtaposed one above the other. Gregory and Heard reported similar effects that they called "phenomenal phenomena." Here, we investigate the similarities between these different effects and put forward a simple, spatial-smoothing explanation that can account for both the direction and magnitude of the reversed effects in the motion, stereo and Vernier domains. In addition, we consider whether the striking motion effects seen when viewing Kitaoka's colour-dependent Fraser-Wilcox figures are related to the reversed phi illusion, given the similarity of the luminance profiles.

Crowding and the Furrow Illusion.

A spot moves vertically across a large grating of oblique parallel lines. When viewed peripherally, the motion path looks oblique, close to the orientation of the background grating. Even when the grating's orientation is concealed by crowding, it can still deflect the spot's perceived motion path.

The Role of the Pupil, Corneal Reflex, and Iris in Determining the Perceived Direction of Gaze.

In specially constructed movies depicting moving eyes, the pupils, irises, and corneal reflexes moved independently and sometimes in opposite directions. We found that the moving pupils or the corneal reflex, not the moving irises, determined the perceived direction of gaze (online Movie 1). When the pupils and irises moved in opposite directions, the one with the higher Michelson contrast determined the perceived direction of gaze (online Movie 2).

Diamond Patterns: Cumulative Cornsweet Effects and Motion-Induced Brightening.

A Cornsweet edge creates the perception of a step in surface lightness between two adjacent regions of identical mean luminance due to a gradient on both sides. We might imagine that in a concatenated set of these gradients, the lightness steps would accumulate, but they do not. However, a diamond pattern, with each diamond filled with an identical luminance gradient does give a cumulative Cornsweet effect. Here, we offer an illumination explanation for why the cumulative effect is visible in the diamonds but not in the basic ramp grating and we demonstrate that when the diamonds drift, they produce a strong brightening effect (depending on the direction of the motion) and a dimming aftereffect. These effects are consistent with the local luminance gradients and not with the global lightness shift of the cumulative Cornsweet effect.