Antagonism between fine and coarse motion sensors depends on stimulus size and contrast

The perceived direction of motion of a brief visual stimulus that contains fine features reverses if static coarser features are added to it. Here we show that the reversal in perceived direction disappears if the stimulus is reduced in size from 2.8 deg to 0.35 deg radius. We show that for a stimulus with 1.4 deg radius, the reversals occur when the ratio between the contrast of the fine features and of the coarser features is higher than 0.8 and lower than 4. For stimulus with 0.35 deg radius, the reversals never appear for any contrast ratio. We also show that if the stimulus is presented within an annular window with small radius, errors disappear but they return if the radius is increased to 2 deg. The errors in motion discrimination described here can be explained by a model of motion sensing in which the signals from fine-scale and coarse-scale sensors are subtracted from one another (I. Serrano-Pedraza, P. Goddard, & A. M. Derrington, 2007). The model produces errors in direction when the signals in the fine and coarse sensors are approximately balanced. The errors disappear when stimulus size is reduced because the reduction in size differentially reduces the response of the low spatial frequency motion sensors.