Attentional Modulation of Self-Motion Perception

Abstract

Attentional effects on self-motion perception (vection) were examined by using a large display in which vertical stripes containing upward or downward moving dots were interleaved to balance the total motion energy for the two directions. The dots moving in the same direction had the same colour, and subjects were asked to attend to one of the two colours. Vection was perceived in the direction opposite to that of non-attended motion. This indicates that non-attended visual motion dominates vection. The attentional effect was then compared with effects of relative depth. Clear attentional effects were again found when there was no relative depth between dots moving in opposite directions, but the effect of depth was much stronger for stimuli with a relative depth. Vection was mainly determined by motion in the far depth plane, although some attentional effects were evident even in this case. These results indicate that attentional modulation for vection exists, but that it is overridden when there is a relative depth between the two motion components.

Attentional load inhibits vection

“…Kitazaki and Sato (2003) produced a vection stimulus consisting of red dots moving upward and green dots moving downward. They reported that when participants attended to the red or green dots, the unattended dots' motion was the dominant stimulus component involved in inducing vection.…”

Inhibition of vection by red

“…This phenomenon is called vection (Fischer & Kornmuller, 1930). Several stimulus attributes are known to af-f f fect the subjective strength or direction of vection, such as depth (e.g., Ito & Shibata, 2005), visual area (e.g., Brandt, Dichgans, & Koenig, 1973), motion direction (e.g., Seno & Sato, 2009), and attention (e.g., Kitazaki & Sato, 2003). To date, color is one of the stimulus attributes in vection induction that has rarely been tested.…”

Compelling Self-Motion Through Virtual Environments Without Actual Self-Motion – Using Self-Motion Illusions ('Vection') to Improve VR User Experience

“…As our visual system readily organizes visual stimuli into figure versus ground (i.e., perceptual objects versus background), the findings by Ohmi et al (1987) could be interpreted as the perceived background dominating vection, whereas "figures" (e.g., objects in the foreground) having less, if any, effect on vection (Kitazaki & Sato, 2003;Ohmi et al, 1987). This hypothesis was confirmed and extended in a clever series of experiments by Seno et al (2009), who used two independently moving luminance-defined gratings organized to form perceptually bistable displays like a Rubin's vase that show spontaneous reversals of the figure-ground (i.e., the object-background) relationship.…”

“…In particular, many factors that have been shown to facilitate vection are also typical properties of the perceived background, like occupying a large field of view, peripheral stimulation, lower spatial frequencies, rigidity and coherent visual motion, being a ground plane, being unattended, or being further away than other parts of the display. For example, paying particular attention to one of the two motion components in Kitazaki & Sato (2003) might have emphasized it's "object" or "foreground" status, such that other aspects of the stimulus were more likely to be perceived as a background and thus dominated vection. Similarly, fixating a stationary part of the display might have perceptually enhanced its objectlikelihood, such that the other (now "background") stimulus dominated vection.…”

“…To investigate potential attentional biases in visual vection, Kitazaki & Sato (2003) presented participants with vertically moving patterns of red and green dots moving in opposite (up vs. down) direction, and asked participants to attend to either the red or the green dots. The perceived direction of vection was largely determined by the non-attended stimulus, both when the red and green dots were spatially separated (exp.…”