The perception of expansion/contraction in human subjects was examined with a visual search paradigm. When searching for a target defined by two-dimensional expansion among distractors defined by two-dimensional contraction, the time needed to find the target did not vary as the number of distractors was increased. However, for a target defined by two-dimensional contraction among distractors defined by two-dimensional expansion, the search time increased as a function of the number of distractors in the display. A similar search asymmetry remained between one-dimensional expansion and one-dimensional contraction, even though one-dimensional expansion was searched in a serial manner. This asymmetry between expansion and contraction reflects a basic characteristic of higher-order motion information processing.

Several different types of motion mechanisms function in the human visual system. The purpose of this study was to clarify the type of reference frame, such as retinotopic and spatiotopic frames of reference, at which those different motion mechanisms function. To achieve this, we used a phenomenon called visual motion priming, in which the perceived direction of a directionally ambiguous test stimulus is influenced by the moving direction of a preceding stimulus. Previous studies have indicated that negative motion priming is induced by a low-level motion mechanism, such as a first-order motion sensor, whereas positive motion priming is induced by a high-level motion mechanism, such as a feature-tracking system. In the experiments, subjects made a saccade after the termination of a smoothly drifting priming stimulus and judged the perceived direction of a 180° phase-shifted sine-wave grating presented subsequently in retinotopic or screen-based spatiotopic coordinates. By manipulating the stimulus parameters, such as primer duration, velocity, and contrast, both positive and negative priming were observed. We found that positive priming was observed in spatiotopic coordinates, whereas negative priming was observed in retinotopic coordinates. Prominent positive priming in spatiotopic coordinates was observed only when the interval between the priming and test stimuli was longer than around 600 ms. This delayed priming effect was not caused by saccadic eye movements. These results suggest that a low-level motion mechanism functions in retinotopic coordinates, whereas a high-level motion mechanism functions in spatiotopic coordinates, in which the representation builds up slowly.

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We studied scotopic motion mechanisms, using a two-frame sinusoidal grating separated by various ISIs equated for mean luminance level. Perceived direction of displacement varied with both ISI and luminance. As luminance decreased, apparent motion reversal disappeared. This is predicted by a first-order motion model if the underlying temporal impulse response function varies from biphasic under photopic conditions to monophasic under scotopic conditions. Performance at long (but not short) ISIs depends upon stimulus contrast, suggesting there is also a scotopic feature-tracking mechanism. With isoluminant and high spatial frequency gratings, where the temporal impulse response function is monophasic, no motion reversal was observed.