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The motion of an object can be described by a single velocity vector, or equivalently, by direction and speed separately. Similarly, our ability to see subtle differences in the motion of two objects could be constrained by either a velocity-based sensory response, or separate sensory responses to direction and speed. To distinguish between these possibilities we investigated whether direction discrimination and speed discrimination were differentially affected by changes in the axis-of-motion. Psychophysical data from 12 naive observers indicated that direction discrimination depended on axis-of-motion, but speed discrimination did not. The difference suggests that a velocity-based sensory response is not the limiting factor on the two tasks. Instead, the results imply that the sensory response which constrains speed discrimination is at least partially independent from the sensory response which constrains direction discrimination.

The minimum information necessary to specify motion requires a change in position across time. Previous studies have shown that human motion measurements improve with more than two frames of motion. This study clarifies how motion information is integrated to produce the best speed and direction discrimination. Using random-dot kinematograms, fine-direction discrimination thresholds and speed discrimination thresholds are assessed as a function of dot lifetime. Specifically, we ask if performance on both tasks depends on dot lifetime in the same manner. If both speed and direction discrimination performance improve the same way with increasing dot lifetime, this would indicate that both tasks have the same integration limit and both tasks may depend on the same underlying mechanisms. Experiment 1 shows that for both tasks a four-frame dot lifetime is necessary for observers to reach asymptotic threshold levels. The absolute level of performance improves with increasing stimulus duration or signal-to-noise ratio, but the integration limit itself does not vary. Experiment 2 examines whether this integration limit is constrained by the number of frames or by the temporal duration of the dot lifetime. The data in Experiment 2 suggest that both a minimum number of samples and a minimal temporal integration period determine the integration limit for recruitment mechanisms. The results suggest that speed and fine-direction discrimination depend upon the same underlying motion mechanisms. These results are discussed in relation to possible underlying physiological substrates and computational models of motion measurement.

We have previously shown that contrast affects speed perception, with lower-contrast, drifting gratings perceived as moving slower. In a recent study, we examined the implications of this result on motion models of speed perception that use the amplitude of the response of linear spatio-temporal filters to determine speed. In this study, we investigate whether the contrast dependence of speed can be understood within the context of models in which speed estimation is made using the temporal frequency of the response of the linear spatio-temporal filters. We measured the effect of contrast on flicker perception and found that contrast manipulations produce opposite effects on perceived drift rate and perceived flicker rate, i.e., reducing contrast increases the apparent temporal frequency of counterphase modulated gratings. This finding argues that, if a temporal frequency-based algorithm underlies speed perception, either flicker and speed perception must not be based on the output of the same mechanism or contrast effects on perceived spatial frequency reconcile the disparate effects observed for perceived temporal frequency and speed.

We used speed discrimination tasks to measure the ability of observers to combine speed information from multiple stimuli distributed across space. We compared speed discrimination thresholds in a classical discrimination paradigm to those in an uncertainty/search paradigm. Thresholds were measured using a temporal two-interval forced-choice design. In the discrimination paradigm, the n gratings in each interval all moved at the same speed and observers were asked to choose the interval with the faster gratings. Discrimination thresholds for this paradigm decreased as the number of gratings increased. This decrease was not due to increasing the effective stimulus area as a control experiment that increased the area of a single grating did not show a similar improvement in thresholds. Adding independent speed noise to each of the n gratings caused thresholds to decrease at a rate similar to the original no-noise case, consistent with observers combining an independent sample of speed from each grating in both the added- and no-noise cases. In the search paradigm, observers were asked to choose the interval in which one of the n gratings moved faster. Thresholds in this case increased with the number of gratings, behavior traditionally attributed to an input bottleneck. However, results from the discrimination paradigm showed that the increase was not due to observers' inability to process these gratings. We have also shown that the opposite trends of the data in the two paradigms can be predicted by a decision theory model that combines independent samples of speed information across space. This demonstrates that models typically used in classical detection and discrimination paradigms are also applicable to search paradigms. As our model does not distinguish between samples in space and time, it predicts that discrimination performance should be the same regardless of whether the gratings are presented in two spatial intervals or two temporal intervals. Our last experiment largely confirmed this prediction.

Although it is well known that motion-in-depth can be detected using binocular cues, it is not known whether those cues can be used to judge the speed of an object moving in depth. There are at least t two possible binocular cues that could be used by the visual system to calculate three dimensional (3-D) speed: the rate of change of binocular disparity, or a comparison of the speeds of motion in the two eyes. We tested which of these cues is used to discriminate the speed of motion-in-depth. First, speed discrimination was measured for a dot moving away from the observer in depth (along the z -axis) and for a random dot stereogram in which a central square moved away from the observer in depth. These stimuli contained both disparity and monocular motion cues. Speed discrimination thresholds were as good for 3-D motion as for monocular sideways motion. Second, a dynamic random dot stereogram (in which the random dot pattern was replaced by a new dot pattern every frame) was used to remove consistent monocular cues. 3-D speed discrimination was now very poor, suggesting that the rate of change of disparity is not a good cue for 3-D speed. Finally, we tested whether observers were able to use the monocular motion cue from one eye to perform the speed discrimination task, or whether there had to be a comparison of the two eyes' monocular cues. By adding a small x-axis velocity component (with random direction) to the z -axis motion, it was possible to disrupt the monocular motion signals without altering the speed of the motion in 3-D. This manipulation did not disrupt the observers' performance, suggesting that monocular speed cues were not being used independently but that there was a comparison of monocular motion signals from the two eyes.

We have previously shown that the perceived speed of a moving grating depends upon its contrast, with lower-contrast patterns appearing to move more slowly than otherwise identical higher-contrast patterns. To explain this finding while remaining consistent with the findings of McKee, Silverman and Nakayama [(1986) Vision Research, 26, 609-619], we proposed that this misperception might arise from a modified version of the contrast-normalization procedure, envisaged by Adelson and Bergen [(1986) The extraction of spatio-temporal energy in human and machine vision (pp. 135-139). Charleston, S.C.: IEEE Computer Society] as a necessary second stage of motion-energy models of human motion processing. Specifically, our previous results might be explained if the two gratings to be compared interfered with each other's normalization. To test this hypothesis we performed two experiments. Experiment 1 demonstrates that the contrast effects persist even when two grating patches to be compared are presented up to 5 sec apart so that they would not be expected to bias each other's normalization. Experiment 2 shows that the contrast effects are unchanged when the two grating patches are surrounded by a range of patterns whose contrast would be expected to interfere with any normalization process. These two results allow the rejection of the contrast-normalized motion-energy hypothesis as an explanation of human speed perception. We discuss the consequences of these results on models of speed processing in the human visual system.

Motion transparency requires that the visual system distinguish different motion vectors and selectively integrate similar motion vectors over space into the perception of multiple surfaces moving through or over each other. Using large-field (7 degrees x 7 degrees) displays containing two populations of random-dots moving in the same (horizontal) direction but at different speeds, we examined speed-based segmentation by measuring the speed difference above which observers can perceive two moving surfaces. We systematically investigated this 'speed-segmentation' threshold as a function of speed and stimulus duration, and found that it increases sharply for speeds above approximately 8 degrees/s. In addition, speed-segmentation thresholds decrease with stimulus duration out to approximately 200 ms. In contrast, under matched conditions, speed-discrimination thresholds stay low at least out to 16 degrees/s and decrease with increasing stimulus duration at a faster rate than for speed segmentation. Thus, motion segmentation and motion discrimination exhibit different speed selectivity and different temporal integration characteristics. Results are discussed in terms of the speed preferences of different neuronal populations within the primate visual cortex.

We evaluated the hypothesis that smooth pursuit eye movements affect speed discrimination thresholds of distal stimuli because they alter the retinal image speed. Subjects judged speed differences of sine-wave gratings while they simultaneously pursued a superimposed moving bar. Speed discrimination thresholds were measured, under conditions of controlled eye movements, for grating speeds of 0.5 and 2.0 deg/sec across a range of eye velocities. Thresholds were simulated using a Monte Carlo method based on the retinal speed hypothesis, and the simulation predictions were compared to the psychophysically determined thresholds. The simulation results provided a good match to the psychophysical data for conditions where the eye moved at a slower speed than the grating, regardless of whether the eye moved in the same or opposite direction. However, when the eye moved at a faster speed than the grating in the same direction, the psychophysical thresholds were significantly higher than predicted by the simulation. Control experiments and analyses rule out explanations based on relative motion cues, saccadic involvement, and attentional demands. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.