Estimating heading during eye movements

doi:10.1016/0042-6989(94)90084-1

Vision Research

Volume 34, Issue 23, December 1994, Pages 3197-3214

https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6989(94)90084-1 Get rights and content

Abstract

In eight experiments, we examined the ability to judge heading during tracking eye movements. To assess the use of retinal-image and extra-retinal information in this task, we compared heading judgments with executed as opposed to simulated eye movements. In general, judgments were much more accurate during executed eye movements. Observers in the simulated eye movement condition misperceived their self-motion as curvilinear translation rather than the linear translation plus eye rotation that was simulated. There were some experimental conditions in which observers could judge heading reasonably accurately during simulated eye movements; these included conditions in which eye movement velocities were 1 deg/sec or less and conditions which made available a horizon cue that exists for locomotion parallel to a ground plane with a visible horizon. Overall, our results imply that extra-retinal, eye-velocity signals are used in determining heading under many, perhaps most, viewing conditions.

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Many studies have demonstrated that attention affects the perception of many visual features. However, previous studies show conflicting results regarding the effect of attention on the perception of self-motion direction (i.e., heading) from optic flow. To address this question, we conducted three behavioral experiments and found that estimation accuracies of large headings (>14°) decreased with attention load, discrimination thresholds of these headings increased with attention load, and heading estimates were systematically compressed toward the focus of attention. Therefore, the current study demonstrated that attention affected heading perception from optic flow, showing that the perception is both information-driven and cognitive.
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This scenario is challenging because rotation causes global distortions to optic flow and may result in a singularity that no longer corresponds to the heading direction. While the networks simulated here do not receive input from the nonvisual signals that would normally accompany eye movements, human studies have characterized heading perception when eye movements are simulated within the visual display (“simulated rotation”) (Banks et al., 1996; Royden et al., 1994). In this case, rotation arises in the optic flow field due to rotation of the virtual camera while the human observer’s eyes remain stationary.
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^†: Present address: Department of Computer Science, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02181, U.S.A.

View full text

Estimating heading during eye movements

Abstract

Vision Research

Computer Vision, Graphics, and Image Processing

Vision Research

Vision Research

British Journal of Animal Behavior

Vision Research

Vision Research

Acta Psychologica

Perception of heading

Nature

Optical flow from eye movement with head immobilized: “Ocular occlusion” beyond the nose

Vision Research

Computer vision: Theory and industrial applications

Catching a baseball

American Journal of Physics

Perception of surface slant and edge labels from optical flow: A computational analysis

Perception

Perceiving heading with different retinal regions and types of optic flow

Perception & Psychophysics

Optic flow and heading judgments

Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (Suppl.)

Perception with an eye to motion

Visual perception of surface curvature. The spin variation and its physiological implications

Biological Cybernetics

Sensitivity of MST neurons to optic flow stimuli. I. A continuum of response selectivity to large-field stimuli

Journal of Neurophysiology

Ueber das optische Wahrnehmen von Bewegungen

Zeitschrift für Sinnesphysiologie

Physiologisch-optische Notizen

Sitzungsberichte der Akademie der Wissenschaften

Sequential ideal-observer analysis of visual discriminations

Psychological Reviews

The perception of the visual world

The senses considered as perceptual systems

What gives rise to the perception of motion?

Psychological Review

Parallax and perspective during aircraft landings

American Journal of Psychology

Static and dynamic visual fields in human space perception

Journal of the Optical Society of America

Subspace methods for recovering rigid motion I: Algorithm and implementation

International Journal of Computer Vision