Suprathreshold temporal-frequency discrimination in the fovea and the periphery

To address the question of whether temporal-frequency information in the fovea and the periphery is processed in fundamentally different ways we measured temporal-frequency-discrimination thresholds for spatiotemporally narrow-band stimuli presented at suprathreshold contrast. Temporal-frequency-discrimination thresholds are similar (within a factor of 2) at the fovea and at 30 degrees in the periphery. We use a line-element approach and three spatiotemporally separable temporal mechanisms to model foveal and peripheral data with the same degree of fidelity. These findings suggest that not only are the front-end temporal mechanisms in the fovea and periphery likely to be similar but also the way in which their outputs are combined at more central sites is the same.