The effect of exposure duration on the analysis of spatial structure in eccentric vision

There is some evidence from grating experiments that the transient presentation of a stimulus pattern interferes with the encoding of positional relationships between pattern elements (i.e. the analysis of spatial structure) more in eccentric vision than in central vision. The present study investigated the effect of exposure duration on the analysis of spatial structure in eccentric vision using a task in which the observer discriminated between two mirror symmetric patterns consisting of short line segments. In each trial, the two patterns were flashed for 140 or 500 ms, and the observer had to decide whether the patterns were identical or mirror symmetric. Both constant-size and size-scaled patterns were used in eccentric vision. The longer exposure duration slightly increased the proportion of correct responses in eccentric vision but performance remained distinctly inferior to that in central vision.