Perceiving the coherent movements of spatially separated features

Lyn Mowafy; Joseph S. Lappin

doi:10.1117/12.44354

1 June 1991 Perceiving the coherent movements of spatially separated features

Lyn Mowafy, Joseph S. Lappin

Proceedings Volume 1453, Human Vision, Visual Processing, and Digital Display II; (1991) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.44354
Event: Electronic Imaging '91, 1991, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

When a partially-occluded object is represented in an image, it is defined by a set of spatially-separated features that may be registered at different spatial scales. To under stand the image, human vision must organize these fragmented optical features into common and distinct object surfaces. Although the common fate of moving features often is considered a primary source of reliable information for image segmentation, little is known of the visual system's capacity to discriminate the coherence relative movements of spatially-separated features. In a series of experiments, observers viewed elements whose movements were correlated (direction and magnitude) or were uncorrelated. Our results indicate that observers can discriminate the two types of movement about as well as they can detect any movement at all. Moreover, the ability to perceive coherent movements is maintained under a variety of conditions including differences in the elements' spatial frequency content, spatial position and contrast, and temporal phase shifts between the spatially-correlated displacements. These results suggest that coherent relative motion may be a fundamental source of information exploited by vision, despite considerable variability in the spatial and temporal characteristics of the individual features.

Citation Download Citation

Lyn Mowafy and Joseph S. Lappin "Perceiving the coherent movements of spatially separated features", Proc. SPIE 1453, Human Vision, Visual Processing, and Digital Display II, (1 June 1991); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.44354

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