Color from Motion: Dichoptic Activation and a Possible Role in Breaking Camouflage

Abstract

Abstract. 'Color from motion' describes the perception of a spread of subjective color over achromatic regions seen as moving. The effect can be produced in a display of multiple frames shown in quick succession, each frame consisting of a fixed, random placement of colored dots on a high-luminance white background with color assignments of some dots, but not dot locations, changing from frame to frame. Evidence is presented that the perception of apparent motion and the spread of subjective color can be activated by binocular combination of disjoint signals to each eye. The dichoptic presentation of every odd-numbered frame of the full stimulus sequence presente·d to one eye and, out of phase, every even-numbered frame to the other eye produces a compelling perception of color from motion equal to that seen with the full sequence presented to each eye alone. This is consistent with the idea that color from motion is regulated in sites at or beyond the convergence of monocular pathways. When the background field in the stimulus display is of low luminance, an amodaJJy complete object, fully colored and matching the dots defining the moving region in hue and saturation, is seen to move beh.iad a partially occluding screen. Observers do not perceive such an object in still view. He!llce, color from motion can be used by the visual system to produce amodal completion, which suggests that it may play a role in enhancing the visibility of camoutlaged objects.

Color from Motion: Separate Contributions of Chromaticity and Luminance

“…There is now evidence that motion processing can rely on a segmentation of the visual image involving a variety of cues (eg Krauskopf and Farell 1990; Kersten et al 1992; Kooi et al 1992;Trueswell and Hayhoe 1993), not luminance alone. Our studies (Cicerone et al 1995;Cicerone and Hoffman 1997;this study) suggest that the opposite may occur: motion perception may influence color perception. Two major pathways, the parvocellular and the magnocellular, carry information from the retina to higher centers.…”

Contours from Apparent Motion: A Computational Theory

“…Displays in which the chromaticities oftest dots are assigned probabilistically can also be created (Cicerone & Hoffman, 1997). Each dot inside the virtual disk has a higher probability of being green but some probability of being red, while each dot outside has a higher probability of being red, but some probability of being green.…”

“…As noted above displays of color from motion in which the color of dots is assigned probabilistically can be created (Cicerone & Hoffman, 1997). Each dot inside is, say, green; while each dot outside has a higher probability of being red, but some probability of being green.…”

Perceptual transparency in neon color spreading displays

“…From the many neon color spreading displays that could potentially have been used for the investigation, a relatively new, animated version of the illusion was chosen, the so-called dynamic neon color spreading display (Cicerone & Hoffman, 1997;Cicerone, Hoffman, Gowdy, & Kim, 1995;Hoffman, 1998), because it seemed to produce a slightly more vivid effect, as compared with static displays. Figure 6 schematically shows three frames of such an animation, which can be constructed in the following way.…”