Local form–motion interactions influence global form perception

Abstract

Object motion perception depends on the integration of form and motion information into a unified neural representation. Historically, form and motion perception are thought to be independent processes; however, research has demonstrated that these processes interact in numerous and complex ways. For example, an object's orientation relative to its direction of motion will influence its perceived speed (Georges, Seriès, Frégnac, & Lorenceau, Vision Research 42:2757-2772, 2002. Here, we investigated whether this local form-motion interaction influences global form processing. In Experiment 1, we replicated the effect of orientation-dependent modulation of speed. In Experiment 2, we investigated whether the perceived speed of local elements could influence the perceived shape of a global object constructed from grouping of those elements. The results indicated that the orientation of local elements indeed influenced the perceived shape of a global object. We propose that inputs from local form-motion processes are one of perhaps many neural mechanisms underlying global form integration.

A nonparametric Bayesian framework for constructing flexible feature representations.

“…The test objects were identical to the given exemplar of a zup except that H1 was horizontally elongated, H2 was even more horizontally elongated, H− was shrunk horizontally, and V1, V2, and V− were similarly transformed but on the vertical dimension. As previously discussed, if translation and scaling transformations are coupled (e.g., because the object is translating fast and so a “blur” in the same direction occurs; McCarthy, Cordeiro, & Caplovitz, 2012), then participants should be more likely to believe an object scaled in the same direction as the motion of a zup than in the opposite direction of the motion. Thus, participants who observed the given exemplar to move horizontally should generalize more to the horizontally elongated objects than the vertically elongated objects, and vice versa for those participants who observed the given exemplar move vertically (see Appendix C for details).…”

The shape of motion perception: Global pooling of transformational apparent motion

“…direction of motion of a second-order envelope (Cropper & Badcock, 2008). Moreover, an object's shape and orientation influences its perceived speed as objects appear to be moving faster when aligned to the motion direction (McCarthy, Cordeiro, & Caplovitz, 2012;Seriès, Georges, Lorenceau, & Frégnac, 2002). Finally, and most surprisingly, adapting to still images that depict movement purportedly generates the motion aftereffect when tested with real motion stimuli (Winawer, Huk, & Boroditsky, 2008).…”

Towards a unified perspective of object shape and motion processing in human dorsal cortex

“…However, in the case of rotational motion, the opposite is true: large object appear to rotate faster than small ones and moreover the degree to which size influences perceived rotational speed is itself mediated by the shape of the object (Blair, Goold, Killebrew & Caplovitz, 2014). The perceived speed of an object can also be influenced by its orientation relative to the direction of motion with objects elongated in the direction of motion appearing to move faster than ones moving in a perpendicular direction (Krolik, 1934; McCarthy, Cordeiro, & Caplovitz, 2012; Metzger, 1936; Or, Khuu, & Hayes, 2010; Pavan, Bimson, Gall, Ghin, & Mather, 2017; Porter, Caplovitz, Kohler, Ackerman, & Peter, 2011; Series, Georges, Frégnac, & Lorenceau, 2002). In all of these examples, the shape of the object has effects on its perceived velocity, which in turn may affect how an observer interacts with it (Medendorp, de Brouwer, & Smeets, 2018).…”