Interaction between colour and motion in human vision

Abstract

There is a wealth of anatomical^1–4 and psychological^5–9 evidence which suggests that when people look at an object in the visual world, its various attributes such as colour, 'form', motion and depth are analysed by separate channels in the visual system. If so, how are these attributes put back together again to create a unified picture of the object? And if the object moves rapidly, how is perfect perceptual synchrony maintained between different features on its surface, if it is indeed true that they are being processed separately? Our evidence suggests that the visual system extracts certain conspicuous image features based on luminance contrast, and that the signals derived from these are then attributed to other features on the object, a process that we call 'capture". Specifically, we find that when either illusory contours or random-dot patterns are moved in the vicinity of a colour-border, the colour border will also seem to move in the same direction even though it is physically stationary.