"Perceptual scotomas": a functional account of motion-induced blindness.
In motion-induced blindness (MIB), salient objects in full view can repeatedly fluctuate into and out of conscious awareness when superimposed onto certain global moving patterns. Here we suggest a new account of this striking phenomenon: Rather than being a failure of visual processing, MIB may be a functional product of the visual system's attempt to separate distal stimuli from artifacts of damage to the visual system itself. When a small object is invariant despite changes that are occurring to a global region of the surrounding visual field, the visual system may discount that stimulus as akin to a scotoma, and may thus expunge it from awareness. We describe three experiments demonstrating new phenomena predicted by this account and discuss how it can also explain several previous results.
New
Joshua J
JJ
Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, USA. joshua.new@yale.edu
Scholl
Brian J
BJ
D001288:Attention; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D009038:Motion; D014796:Visual Perception