Faculty Collaboration Database

Integration mechanisms for heading perception. Seeing Perceiving 2010;23(3):197-221

Date

06/10/2010

Pubmed ID

20529443

Pubmed Central ID

PMC2935514

DOI

10.1163/187847510X503605

Scopus ID

2-s2.0-79958015361 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site)   5 Citations

Abstract

Previous studies of heading perception suggest that human observers employ spatiotemporal pooling to accommodate noise in optic flow stimuli. Here, we investigated how spatial and temporal integration mechanisms are used for judgments of heading through a psychophysical experiment involving three different types of noise. Furthermore, we developed two ideal observer models to study the components of the spatial information used by observers when performing the heading task. In the psychophysical experiment, we applied three types of direction noise to optic flow stimuli to differentiate the involvement of spatial and temporal integration mechanisms. The results indicate that temporal integration mechanisms play a role in heading perception, though their contribution is weaker than that of the spatial integration mechanisms. To elucidate how observers process spatial information to extract heading from a noisy optic flow field, we compared psychophysical performance in response to random-walk direction noise with that of two ideal observer models (IOMs). One model relied on 2D screen-projected flow information (2D-IOM), while the other used environmental, i.e., 3D, flow information (3D-IOM). The results suggest that human observers compensate for the loss of information during the 2D retinal projection of the visual scene for modest amounts of noise. This suggests the likelihood of a 3D reconstruction during heading perception, which breaks down under extreme levels of noise.

Author List

Sikoglu EM, 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

Cues
Female
Humans
Male
Models, Biological
Motion Perception
Orientation
Psychophysics
Young Adult