Moving Stimuli Define the Shape of Stationary Chromatic Patterns

Abstract

A study is reported of phenomena involved in perceptually unified organisation of a stationary chromatic pattern and a moving black outline or dot pattern. When the corners of the outline pattern were temporally oscillated on a stationary chromatic square, the chromatic border appeared to follow the moving outline, as if captured by it. This capture effect was also observed with moving dots: the chromatic border was defined by an imaginary line connecting the moving dots. Both capture effects occur over a region that becomes wider with increasing velocity of the oscillation. These observations suggest that the visual system effectively uses information from moving features to define the shape of overlapping chromatic image regions.