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Updated: Oct 7, 2026

Motion-Acuity Test for Visual Field Acuity Measurement with Motion-Defined Shapes
Published on: February 23, 2024
The effects of dot density and motion coherence on perceptual fading of a target in noise
1Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle, UK. A.E.Welchman@ncl.ac.uk
Abstract:
A peripherally presented target embedded in dynamic texture perceptually disappears (or 'fills-in') after around 10 s of steady fixation. This phenomenon was investigated for a target containing moving dots. The effects of manipulating the coherence of the motion within the target and the density of dots across the whole screen were explored. Coherence thresholds for the detection of a target at different dot densities were recorded for comparison. Fading occurred faster as either motion coherence or dot density was reduced. Coherence thresholds for target detection were unaffected by manipulations of dot density. There appeared to be no relationship between the stimulus exposure time needed for fading and the coherence threshold for detection of a target. The results suggest that the time taken for a target to fade is not a simple function of its motion detection threshold.
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