title: Visual performance fields: frames of reference.
abstract: Performance in most visual discrimination tasks is better along the horizontal than the vertical meridian (Horizontal-Vertical Anisotropy, HVA), and along the lower than the upper vertical meridian (Vertical Meridian Asymmetry, VMA), with intermediate performance at intercardinal locations. As these inhomogeneities are prevalent throughout visual tasks, it is important to understand the perceptual consequences of dissociating spatial reference frames. In all studies of performance fields so far, allocentric environmental references and egocentric observer reference frames were aligned. Here we quantified the effects of manipulating head-centric and retinotopic coordinates on the shape of visual performance fields. When observers viewed briefly presented radial arrays of Gabors and discriminated the tilt of a target relative to homogeneously oriented distractors, performance fields shifted with head tilt (Experiment 1), and fixation (Experiment 2). These results show that performance fields shift in-line with egocentric referents, corresponding to the retinal location of the stimulus.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Psychology and Center for Neural Science, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America. jennifer.e.corbett@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jennifer E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Corbett
authors.forename: Marisa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Carrasco
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000379:methods; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015588:Observer Variation; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012160:Retina / Q000473:pathology*; D013028:Space Perception; D014785:Vision, Ocular; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception; D055815:Young Adult