Attentional modulation of motion-induced blindness

Abstract

When a global moving pattern is superimposed on high-contrast stationary or slowly moving stimuli, the stimuli can be perceived as disappearing and reappearing alternately for periods of several seconds. This visual illusory phenomenon was named "motion-induced blindness" (MIB) in recent literature. So far there is no consensus on the mechanism of MIB, especially on the role of attention in this phenomenon. To examine the effect of spatial attention on MIB, the present study manipulated the participants' spatial attention by asking them to respond to two targets simultaneously presented in bilateral visual fields (the divided-attention condition) or only respond to one of them (the fo- cused-attention condition). A central arrow was presented as an endogenous cue to index the target visual field in the focused-attention condition, while a point was presented instead in the divided-attention condition. The results show that the percentage of accumulated invisibility period was larger for the targets in the focused-attention condition than for those in the divided-attention condition. This effect of attention is significant in upper visual field (UVF) and left lower visual field (left LVF); that is, this effect shows a hemispheric asymmetry in LVF but not in UVF. Furthermore, the percentage of accumulated invisibility period was larger for targets in left LVF than for those in right LVF in the focused-attention condition, but no hemispheric asymmetry was found in the divided-attention condition. In addition, the increased percentage of accumulated invisibility period in the focused-attention condition originated merely in the enhancement of the mean phase duration of disappearance in LVF, while the disappearance occurred more frequently and lasted longer for each occurrence, which led to an increase in the total invisibility period, in the focused-than divided-attention condition in UVF. These results suggest that the modulation of spatial attention on MIB has different patterns in UVF and LVF. motion-induced blindness, spatial attention, perceptual rivalry, hemispheric asymmetry, visual field

Simulated forward and backward self motion, based on realistic parameters, causes strong motion induced blindness

“…The most frequently used display for demonstrating MIB consists of three yellow targets and a blue mask of rotating crosses, originally introduced by Bonneh and colleagues (2001). Using this display, various stimulus parameters have been studied (Bonneh et al, 2001;Hsu, Yeh and Kramer, 2004;Metzger, 2009;Mitroff & Scholl, 2005;Sakaguchi, 2006;Schölvinck & Rees, 2009;Shibata, Kawachi & Gyoba, 2010), among which are the effect of target location (Geng, Song, Li, Xu & Zhu, 2007;Nuruki, Oliver, Campana, Wash & Rothwell, 2013;Rosenthal, Davies, Aimola-Davies, & Humphreys;Schölvinck & Rees, 2009;Wells, Leber & Sparrow, 2011;Wallis & Arnold, 2009), mask speed (Bonneh et al, 2001;Grindley & Townsend, 1965;Libedinsky et al, 2009), and cues of mask depth (Graf, Adam & Lages, 2002;Rosenthal et al, 2013).…”

“…In terms of target location, a number of studies have reported greater disappearance when a target is located in the upper left quadrant of the visual display, compared to other 3 tested locations (Bonneh et al, 2001;Nuruki et al, 2013;Rosenthal et al, 2013;Wells & Leber, 2014;Wells et al, 2011). A more frequent disappearance of upper left targets has been replicated several times (Bonneh et al, 2001;Geng et al, 2007;Grindley & Townsend, 1965;Rosenthal et al, 2013). However, research finding a significant upper left bias generally uses the original three target triangular display (Bonneh et al, 2001), and finds a significant bias only in relation to the lower central target (Bonneh et al, 2001;Nuruki et al, 2013).…”

“…There has not yet been a controlled comparison of targets presented in all four quadrants of the screen to determine the effects of visual quadrant on disappearance, despite evidence suggesting that upper visual field may exhibit an effect over target disappearance. The trend regarding target location is important to consider when exploring MIB due to its potential relationship with the neural mechanisms of attention (Dieter et al, 2015;Geng et al, 2007). Indeed, Bonneh and colleagues (2001) interpreted the top-left bias as the result of processing the global mask at the expense of the local target, mediated by the right-hemisphere dominance of visuospatial attention.…”

A Common Mechanism for Perceptual Reversals in Motion-Induced Blindness, the Troxler Effect, and Perceptual Filling-In

“…In addition, recent studies demonstrated a link between miscrosaccades and shifts in visual attention (Hafed, 2013;Hafed, Goffart, & Krauzlis, 2009;Yuval-Greenberg, Merriam, & Heeger, 2014). Whereas attention modulates illusory disappearances in MIB, TE, and PFI in the same fashion (Devyatko, 2011;De Weerd et al, 2006;Geng et al, 2007;Lou, 1999;Scho¨lvinck & Rees, 2009), the mechanism producing similar patterns of microsaccades in the three illusions can be also modulated by shifts in attention.…”

“Perceptual Scotomas”

“…MIB may be enhanced for especially high-contrast anomalous targets, fast mask speeds, and high-quality mask motion (Bonneh et al, 2001) because these factors all enhance the magnitude of the contrast between the mask and the target, thus enhancing the anomaly itself. MIB may be enhanced by attention to the targets (Carter, Luedeman, Mitroff, & Nakayama, 2008;Geng, Song, Li, Xu, & Zhu, 2007) for a similar reason: Such attention may serve to highlight the underlying conflict, whereas unattended targets may already go unnoticed without such effort, even without inducing a perceptual scotoma. At the same time, MIB may be enhanced for especially lowcontrast anomalous targets (Hsu et al, 2004) because such targets provide relatively little bottom-up stimulation (constituting an anomaly that must then be explained away) in the first place.…”