Spatio-temporal differentiation and integration in visual motion perception

Summary Perceptual organization during short tachistoscopic presentation of stimulus patterns formed by ten moving bright spots, representing a human body in walking, running, etc. was investigated. Exposure times were .1 sec to .5 sec.The results reveal that in all Ss the dot pattern is perceptually organized to a gestalt, a walking, running, etc., person at an exposure time of .2 sec. 40% of Ss perceived a human body in such motion at presentation times as short as 0.1 sec. Under the experimental conditions used the track length of the bright spots at the threshold of integration to a moving unit was of the size order 10 visual angle.This result is regarded as indicating that a complex vector analysis of the proximal motion pattern is accomplished at the initial stage of physiological signal recording and that it is a consequence of receptive field organization. It is discussed in terms of vector calculus.