Orientation repulsion and attraction in alignment perception

Abstract

Orientation masking induces changes of discrimination thresholds and perceived orientation. Studies on alignment discrimination of Vernier stimuli concentrated on masking induced changes of discrimination thresholds, without considering possible changes of perceived orientation and/or alignment of the two-line segments. Measuring both parameters in an orientation discrimination task, we confirmed a standard repulsion effect between a single line target and a mask grating that co-varied with elevated orientation discrimination thresholds. Masking a Vernier stimulus in an alignment discrimination task, we observed a strong misperception of alignment that was accompanied with elevated alignment discrimination thresholds. Orientation masking on perceived orientation and alignment of a Vernier stimulus revealed orientation repulsion and attraction that depended on the spatio-orientation configuration of the superimposed stimuli. Control of task-dependent effects confirmed that our observed pattern of results was independent of attentional or cognitive demands.

Near- and Far-Surround Suppression in Human Motion Discrimination

“…The specific interaction patterns within a feature shed light on the underlying computational process. For example, the psychophysical results of modulating perception of orientation targets (e.g., perceived contrast changes, tilt illusion, or Vernier) are attributed to neuronal processing and interactions between orientation sensitive neurons with overlapping or non-overlapping receptive fields (Gilbert and Wiesel, 1990 ; Westheimer, 1990 ; Kapadia et al, 2000 ; Tzvetanov et al, 2007 ; Petrov and McKee, 2009 ; Tzvetanov, 2012 ), which are thought to reflect the early statistical structure of natural images (Yen and Finkel, 1998 ; Sigman et al, 2001 ; Simoncelli and Olshausen, 2001 ). In parallel, center-surround motion processing has demonstrated segregation and assimilation results (Murakami and Shimojo, 1995 , 1996 ; Kim and Wilson, 1997 ; Tadin, 2015 ), which are associated with the hMT/V5 area of motion processing neurons and their interactions.…”

Modeling Binocular and Motion Transparency Processing by Local Center-Surround Interactions

“…The perceived verticality of lines as well as the offset between two line segments is influence by a superimposed line grating mask. Alignment tasks for the two line segments show effects of attraction and repulsion (Tzvetanov et al, 2007). Furthermore, attraction and repulsion occur in the stereo (Stevenson, 1991) and motion domain (Braddick et al, 2002).…”