The effect of transiency on perceived velocity of visual patterns: a case of "temporal capture"

We measured the points of subjective equality of velocity for dynamic unidirectionally moving random-dot patterns with different amounts of transiency. The transiency was changed by varying the time a dot would move before being randomly replotted within the stimulus. The perceived velocity of patterns moving at intermediate velocities (4 or 6 deg/sec) was increased by decreasing the point lifetime while no speedup was observed at high velocities (12 deg/sec). A speedup was also observed when a few stationary points of short lifetime were introduced into a stimulus. The non-directional transiency generated by these flickering points seems to be captured by the moving pattern and biases the velocity estimate. We term this phenomenon "temporal capture". The results are in agreement with models that determine velocity by comparing the activity in lower and higher temporal frequency channels. Our stimuli would selectively increase activity in high temporal frequency channels and thus lead to an increase in perceived velocity.