Faculty Collaboration Database

Different motion cues are used to estimate time-to-arrival for frontoparallel and looming trajectories. Vision Res 2011 Dec 08;51(23-24):2378-85

Date

11/08/2011

Pubmed ID

22056519

Pubmed Central ID

PMC3390210

DOI

10.1016/j.visres.2011.09.016

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-82455199132 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   10 Citations

Abstract

Estimation of time-to-arrival for moving objects is critical to obstacle interception and avoidance, as well as to timing actions such as reaching and grasping moving objects. The source of motion information that conveys arrival time varies with the trajectory of the object raising the question of whether multiple context-dependent mechanisms are involved in this computation. To address this question we conducted a series of psychophysical studies to measure observers' performance on time-to-arrival estimation when object trajectory was specified by angular motion ("gap closure" trajectories in the frontoparallel plane), looming (colliding trajectories, TTC) or both (passage courses, TTP). We measured performance of time-to-arrival judgments in the presence of irrelevant motion, in which a perpendicular motion vector was added to the object trajectory. Data were compared to models of expected performance based on the use of different components of optical information. Our results demonstrate that for gap closure, performance depended only on the angular motion, whereas for TTC and TTP, both angular and looming motion affected performance. This dissociation of inputs suggests that gap closures are mediated by a separate mechanism than that used for the detection of time-to-collision and time-to-passage. We show that existing models of TTC and TTP estimation make systematic errors in predicting subject performance, and suggest that a model which weights motion cues by their relative time-to-arrival provides a better account of performance.

Author List

Calabro FJ, Beardsley SA, Vaina LM

Author

Scott Beardsley PhD Associate Professor in the Biomedical Engineering department at Marquette University

MESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold

Adolescent
Adult
Cues
Distance Perception
Female
Humans
Judgment
Male
Motion Perception
Photic Stimulation
Psychophysics
Task Performance and Analysis
Time Perception
Young Adult