Figural after-effects: A psychophysical theory of the displacement effect.

Abstract

MANY AFTER-EFFECT PHENOMENA have been reported since Purkinje (1825) and Addams (1834) independently rediscovered the after-effect of seen movement. After-effects were described before 1930 for such diverse perceptual spaces as auditory location (Flugel, 1921;Bartlett & Mark, 1922), repetition rate (Cathcart & Dawson, 1928), pitch (von Bekesy, 1929Cathcart & Dawson, 1929), colour (Cathcart & Dawson, 1929, and geometric size (Cathcart & Dawson, 1929). However, it awaited the now classic paper by Kohler and Wallach (1944) for interest in the problem to become widespread. Kohler and Wallach presented an ingenious theory based on the spread of currents which build up resistance to their own passage through the cortex. Many studies have tested predictions based on this theory of cortical satiation, and prediction has often proved satisfactory. However, some crucial experiments have given results at variance with the theory. Drastic changes in the gross electrical characteristics of the visual cortex have been produced, without apparent alteration in the visual function (Lashley, et al., 1951;. Ikeda and Obonai (1955a) reported die existence of a retroactive effect, in which the inspection figure follows the test figure in time. The displacements in the retroactive effect are of the same character as those in the ordinary after-effect. It is difficult to see how either of these observations can be reconciled with the basic premises of satiation theory.Other theories of the figural after-effects have been proposed (for example, Gibson, 1933;Osgood & Heyer, 1952;Obonai, 1954;Obonai, 1957;Yokose, 1954). Nevertheless, the recent reviews by Spitz (1958), McEwan (1958), andDay, et al. (1959), who did not consider the Japanese theories, agree that no satisfactory explanation exists for the figural after-effects. Both Japanese theories are restricted in application. That of Yokose appears, from the temporal relations found by Nozawa (1958), to deal only with neutralization effects, and that of Obonai seems not at present to be capable of quantitative prediction. Either or both of these theories may eventually prove compatible with the theory to be presented below. It is not suggested that the present paper gives a iDefence Research Medical Laboratories Project no. 250, DRML Report no. 250-3, H.R. no. 234.

Perception of interpolated position and orientation by vision and active touch

“…The fact that the tactual displacements are larger than the visual is consistent with results from figural aftereffect studies. Taylor (1962) fitted a theoretical equation to the distance paradox data from a number of experiments in auditory, visual, and tactual spaces, and found that the scale parameter of the equation was the same for all the experiments except the single one on tactual width (Charles & Duncan, 1959); for this experiment the scale parameter was about two and a half times larger than that found for the various visual and auditory spaces.…”

Tracking Rotary Motion After-Effect with Different Illuminations of Inspection and Test Fields

“…The perceived size of the interval is thus increased, or, in another way of looking at the effect, objects appear displaced away from the newly introduced anchor point. The amount of displacement depends, among other things, on the accuracy of perception of the anchor point.It has proved possible in some simple geomeuic situations to use the theory numerically to predict the amount of displacement both as a function of changes in the geometry (Taylor, 1962) and as a function of variation in the precision with which the anchor point may be perceived (Taylor, 1963a). Numerical prediction has not proved possible, however, in situations where two anchor points may be expected to interact, or where there is a well defined zero point on the continuum.…”

“…It has proved possible in some simple geomeuic situations to use the theory numerically to predict the amount of displacement both as a function of changes in the geometry (Taylor, 1962) and as a function of variation in the precision with which the anchor point may be perceived (Taylor, 1963a). Numerical prediction has not proved possible, however, in situations where two anchor points may be expected to interact, or where there is a well defined zero point on the continuum.…”

“…The present study was performed to test predictions from a psychophysical theory of figural aftereffect (Taylor, 1962) and to examine further the hypothesis that the first phase of the rotary motion after-effect can be regarded as belonging to the same family of effects as the figural after-effects.…”

A Self-Organized Artificial Neural Network Architecture for Sensory Integration with Applications to Letter-Phoneme Integration

“…Second, there is no quality estimate of the stimuli resulting in the unimodal percepts, and such estimates seem to play a key role when information from different modalities is combined. It has been hypothesized that in the nervous system, different cues are combined in such a way that more reliable cues are given greater weight in the integrated percept; this hypothesis is not new (Taylor, 1962). The hypothesis has of late been experimentally verified in a number of cases (for a recent review, see, for instance, the work of Ernst & Bülthoff, 2004), including the case where the cues are unimodal, such as visual cues for depth estimation (Landy, Maloney, Johnston, & Young, 1995) and cases where the cues are bimodal, such as audiovisual in the ventriloquist effect (Alais & Burr, 2004) and visual-haptic in estimating the height of an object (Ernst & Banks, 2002).…”