The impact of perceptual complexity on road crossing decisions in younger and older adults.

Cognitive abilities decline with healthy ageing which can have a critical impact on day-to-day activities. One example is road crossing where older adults (OAs) disproportionally fall victim to pedestrian accidents. The current research examined two virtual reality experiments that investigated how the complexity of the road crossing situation impacts OAs (N = 19, ages 65-85) and younger adults (YAs, N = 34, ages 18-24) with a range of executive functioning abilities (EFs). Overall, we found that OAs were able to make safe crossing decisions, and were more cautious than YAs. This continued to be the case in high cognitive load situations. In these situations, safe decisions were associated with an increase in head movements for participants with poorer attention switching than participants with better attention switching suggesting these groups developed compensation strategies to continue to make safe decisions. In situations where participants had less time to make a crossing decision all participants had difficulties making safe crossing decisions which was amplified for OAs and participants with poorer EFs. Our findings suggest more effort should be taken to ensure that road crossing points are clear of visual obstructions and more speed limits should be placed around retirement or care homes, neither of which are legislated for in the UK and Australia.

Cognitive-perceptual traits associated with autism and schizotypy influence use of physics during predictive visual tracking.

Schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can disrupt cognition and consequently behaviour. Traits of ASD and the subclinical manifestation of schizophrenia called schizotypy have been studied in healthy populations with overlap found in trait profiles linking ASD social deficits to negative schizotypy and ASD attention to detail to positive schizotypy. Here, we probed the relationship between subtrait profiles, cognition and behaviour, using a predictive tracking task to measure individuals' eye movements under three gravity conditions. A total of 48 healthy participants tracked an on-screen projected ball under familiar gravity, inverted upward acceleration (against gravity) and horizontal gravity control conditions while eye movements were recorded and dynamic performance quantified. Participants completed ASD and schizotypy inventories generating highly correlated scores, r = 0.73. All tracked best under the gravity condition, producing anticipatory downward responses from stimulus onset which were delayed under upward inverted gravity. Tracking performance was not associated with overall ASD or schizotypy trait levels. Combining measures using principal components analysis (PCA), we decomposed the inventories into subtraits unveiling interesting patterns. Positive schizotypy was associated with ASD dimensions of rigidity, odd behaviour and face processing, which all linked to anticipatory tracking responses under inverted gravity. In contrast, negative schizotypy was associated with ASD dimensions of social interactions and rigidity and to early stimulus-driven tracking under gravity. There was also substantial nonspecific overlap between ASD and schizotypy dissociated from tracking. Our work links positive-odd traits with anticipatory tracking when physics rules are violated and negative-social traits with exploitation of physics laws of motion.

The Relative Contribution of Executive Functions and Aging on Attentional Control During Road Crossing.

As we age, many physical, perceptual and cognitive abilities decline, which can critically impact our day-to-day lives. However, the decline of many abilities is concurrent; thus, it is challenging to disentangle the relative contributions of different abilities in the performance deterioration in realistic tasks, such as road crossing, with age. Research into road crossing has shown that aging and a decline in executive functioning (EFs) is associated with altered information sampling and less safe crossing decisions compared to younger adults. However, in these studies declines in age and EFs were confounded. Therefore, it is impossible to disentangle whether age-related declines in EFs impact on visual sampling and road-crossing performance, or whether visual exploration, and road-crossing performance, are impacted by aging independently of a decline in EFs. In this study, we recruited older adults with maintained EFs to isolate the impacts of aging independently of a decline EFs on road crossing abilities. We recorded eye movements of younger adults and older adults while they watched videos of road traffic and were asked to decide when they could cross the road. Overall, our results show that older adults with maintained EFs sample visual information and make similar road crossing decisions to younger adults. Our findings also reveal that both environmental constraints and EF abilities interact with aging to influence how the road-crossing task is performed. Our findings suggest that older pedestrians' safety, and independence in day-to-day life, can be improved through a limitation of scene complexity and a preservation of EF abilities.

Speed Estimation for Visual Tracking Emerges Dynamically from Nonlinear Frequency Interactions.

Sensing the movement of fast objects within our visual environments is essential for controlling actions. It requires online estimation of motion direction and speed. We probed human speed representation using ocular tracking of stimuli of different statistics. First, we compared ocular responses to single drifting gratings (DGs) with a given set of spatiotemporal frequencies to broadband motion clouds (MCs) of matched mean frequencies. Motion energy distributions of gratings and clouds are point-like, and ellipses oriented along the constant speed axis, respectively. Sampling frequency space, MCs elicited stronger, less variable, and speed-tuned responses. DGs yielded weaker and more frequency-tuned responses. Second, we measured responses to patterns made of two or three components covering a range of orientations within Fourier space. Early tracking initiation of the patterns was best predicted by a linear combination of components before nonlinear interactions emerged to shape later dynamics. Inputs are supralinearly integrated along an iso-velocity line and sublinearly integrated away from it. A dynamical probabilistic model characterizes these interactions as an excitatory pooling along the iso-velocity line and inhibition along the orthogonal "scale" axis. Such crossed patterns of interaction would appropriately integrate or segment moving objects. This study supports the novel idea that speed estimation is better framed as a dynamic channel interaction organized along speed and scale axes.

Evidence of inverted gravity-driven variation in predictive sensorimotor function.

We move our eyes to place the fovea into the part of a viewed scene currently of interest. Recent evidence suggests that each human has signature patterns of eye movements like handwriting which depend on their sensitivity, allocation of attention and experience. Use of implicit knowledge of how earth's gravity influences object motion has been shown to aid dynamic perception. We used a projected ball-tracking task with a plain background offering no context cues to probe the effect of acquired experience about physical laws of gravitation on performance differences of 44 participants under a simulated gravity and an atypical (upward) antigravity condition. Performance measured by the unsigned difference between instantaneous eye and stimulus positions (RMSE) was consistently worse in the antigravity condition. In the vertical RMSE, participants took about 200 ms longer to improve to the best performance for antigravity compared to gravity trials. The antigravity condition produced a divergence of individual performance which was correlated with levels of questionnaire-based quantified traits of schizotypy but not control traits. Grouping participants by high or low traits revealed a negative relationship between schizotypy trait level and both initiation and maintenance of tracking, a result consistent with trait-related impoverished sensory prediction. The findings confirm for the first time that where cues enabling exact estimation of acceleration are unavailable, knowledge of gravity contributes to dynamic prediction improving motion processing. With acceleration expectations violated, we demonstrate that antigravity tracking could act as a multivariate diagnostic window into predictive brain function.

Scene Regularity Interacts With Individual Biases to Modulate Perceptual Stability.

Sensory input is inherently ambiguous but our brains achieve remarkable perceptual stability. Prior experience and knowledge of the statistical properties of the world are thought to play a key role in the stabilization process. Individual differences in responses to ambiguous input and biases toward one or the other interpretation could modulate the decision mechanism for perception. However, the role of perceptual bias and its interaction with stimulus spatial properties such as regularity and element density remain to be understood. To this end, we developed novel bi-stable moving visual stimuli in which perception could be parametrically manipulated between two possible mutually exclusive interpretations: transparently or coherently moving. We probed perceptual stability across three composite stimulus element density levels with normal or degraded regularity using a factorial design. We found that increased density led to the amplification of individual biases and consequently to a stabilization of one interpretation over the alternative. This effect was reduced for degraded regularity, demonstrating an interaction between density and regularity. To understand how prior knowledge could be used by the brain in this task, we compared the data with simulations coming from four different hierarchical models of causal inference. These models made different assumptions about the use of prior information by including conditional priors that either facilitated or inhibited motion direction integration. An architecture that included a prior inhibiting motion direction integration consistently outperformed the others. Our results support the hypothesis that direction integration based on sensory likelihoods maybe the default processing mode with conditional priors inhibiting integration employed in order to help motion segmentation and transparency perception.

Bayesian Modeling of Motion Perception Using Dynamical Stochastic Textures.

A common practice to account for psychophysical biases in vision is to frame them as consequences of a dynamic process relying on optimal inference with respect to a generative model. The study presented here details the complete formulation of such a generative model intended to probe visual motion perception with a dynamic texture model. It is derived in a set of axiomatic steps constrained by biological plausibility. We extend previous contributions by detailing three equivalent formulations of this texture model. First, the composite dynamic textures are constructed by the random aggregation of warped patterns, which can be viewed as three-dimensional gaussian fields. Second, these textures are cast as solutions to a stochastic partial differential equation (sPDE). This essential step enables real-time, on-the-fly texture synthesis using time-discretized autoregressive processes. It also allows for the derivation of a local motion-energy model, which corresponds to the log likelihood of the probability density. The log likelihoods are essential for the construction of a Bayesian inference framework. We use the dynamic texture model to psychophysically probe speed perception in humans using zoom-like changes in the spatial frequency content of the stimulus. The human data replicate previous findings showing perceived speed to be positively biased by spatial frequency increments. A Bayesian observer who combines a gaussian likelihood centered at the true speed and a spatial frequency dependent width with a "slow-speed prior" successfully accounts for the perceptual bias. More precisely, the bias arises from a decrease in the observer's likelihood width estimated from the experiments as the spatial frequency increases. Such a trend is compatible with the trend of the dynamic texture likelihood width.

The relative contribution of noise and adaptation to competition during tri-stable motion perception.

Animals exploit antagonistic interactions for sensory processing and these can cause oscillations between competing states. Ambiguous sensory inputs yield such perceptual multistability. Despite numerous empirical studies using binocular rivalry or plaid pattern motion, the driving mechanisms behind the spontaneous transitions between alternatives remain unclear. In the current work, we used a tristable barber pole motion stimulus combining empirical and modeling approaches to elucidate the contributions of noise and adaptation to underlying competition. We first robustly characterized the coupling between perceptual reports of transitions and continuously recorded eye direction, identifying a critical window of 480 ms before button presses, within which both measures were most strongly correlated. Second, we identified a novel nonmonotonic relationship between stimulus contrast and average perceptual switching rate with an initially rising rate before a gentle reduction at higher contrasts. A neural fields model of the underlying dynamics introduced in previous theoretical work and incorporating noise and adaptation mechanisms was adapted, extended, and empirically validated. Noise and adaptation contributions were confirmed to dominate at the lower and higher contrasts, respectively. Model simulations, with two free parameters controlling adaptation dynamics and direction thresholds, captured the measured mean transition rates for participants. We verified the shift from noise-dominated toward adaptation-driven in both the eye direction distributions and intertransition duration statistics. This work combines modeling and empirical evidence to demonstrate the signal-strength-dependent interplay between noise and adaptation during tristability. We propose that the findings generalize beyond the barber pole stimulus case to ambiguous perception in continuous feature spaces.

Looking for symmetry: fixational eye movements are biased by image mirror symmetry.

Humans are highly sensitive to symmetry. During scene exploration, the area of the retina with dense light receptor coverage acquires most information from relevant locations determined by gaze fixation. We characterized patterns of fixational eye movements made by observers staring at synthetic scenes either freely (i.e., free exploration) or during a symmetry orientation discrimination task (i.e., active exploration). Stimuli could be mirror-symmetric or not. Both free and active exploration generated more saccades parallel to the axis of symmetry than along other orientations. Most saccades were small (<2°), leaving the fovea within a 4° radius of fixation. Analysis of saccade dynamics showed that the observed parallel orientation selectivity emerged within 500 ms of stimulus onset and persisted throughout the trials under both viewing conditions. Symmetry strongly distorted existing anisotropies in gaze direction in a seemingly automatic process. We argue that this bias serves a functional role in which adjusted scene sampling enhances and maintains sustained sensitivity to local spatial correlations arising from symmetry.

Numerosity and density judgments: biases for area but not for volume.

Human observers can rapidly judge the number of items in a scene. This ability is underpinned by specific mechanisms encoding number or density. We investigated whether judgments of number and density are biased by a change in volume, as they are by a change in area. Stimuli were constructed using nonoverlapping black and white luminance-defined dots. An eight-mirror Wheatstone stereoscope was used to present the dots as though in a volume. Using a temporal two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task and the Method of Constant Stimuli (MOCS), we measured the precision and bias (PSE shift) of numerosity and density judgments, separately, for stimuli differing in area or volume. For two-dimensional (2-D) stimuli, consistent with previous literature, perceived density was biased as area increased. However, perceived number was not. For three-dimensional (3-D) stimuli, despite a vivid impression of the dots filling a cylindrical volume, there was no bias in perceived density or number as volume increased. A control experiment showed that all of our observers could easily perceive disparity in our stimuli. Our findings reveal that number and density judgments that are biased by area are not similarly biased by volume changes.

Dynamic resolution of ambiguity during tri-stable motion perception.

Multi-stable perception occurs when an image falling onto the retina has multiple incompatible interpretations. We probed this phenomenon in psychophysical experiments using a moving barber-pole visual stimulus configured as a square to generate three competing perceived directions, horizontal, diagonal and vertical. We characterised patterns in reported switching type and percept duration, classifying switches into three groups related to the direction cues driving such transitions i.e. away from diagonal, towards diagonal and between cardinals. The proportions of each class reported by participants depended on contrast. The two including diagonals dominated at low contrast and those between cardinals increased in proportion as contrast was increased. At low contrasts, the less frequent cardinals persisted for shorter than the dominant diagonals and this was reversed at higher contrasts. This observed asymmetry between the dominance of transition classes appears to be driven by different underlying dynamics between cardinal and the oblique cues and their related transitions. At trial onset we found that transitions away from diagonal dominate, a tendency which later in the trial reverses to dominance by transitions excluding the diagonal, most prominently at higher contrasts. Thus ambiguity is resolved over a contrast dependent temporal integration similar to, but lasting longer than that observed when resolving the aperture problem to estimate direction. When the diagonal direction dominates perception, evidence is found for a noisier competition seen in broader duration distributions than during dominance of cardinal perception. There remain aspects of these identified differences in cardinal and oblique dynamics to be investigated in future.

Perceptual fields reveal previously hidden dynamics of human visual motion sensitivity.

Motion sensitivity is a fundamental property of human vision. Although its neural correlates are normally only directly accessible with neurophysiological approaches, Neri (Neri P. J Neurosci 34: 8449-8491, 2014) proposed psychophysical reverse correlation to derive perceptual fields, revealing previously unseen dynamics of human motion detection. In this Neuro Forum, these key findings are discussed, putting them into broader context and pointing out possible implications of spatial scale considerations on the interpretation of the findings and dynamic model proposed.

Contour inflections are adaptable features.

An object's shape is a strong cue for visual recognition. Most models of shape coding emphasize the role of oriented lines and curves for coding an object's shape. Yet inflection points, which occur at the junction of two oppositely signed curves, are ubiquitous features in natural scenes and carry important information about the shape of an object. Using a visual aftereffect in which the perceived shape of a contour is changed following prolonged viewing of a slightly different-shaped contour, we demonstrate a specific aftereffect for a contour inflection. Control conditions show that this aftereffect cannot be explained by adaptation to either the component curves or to the local orientation at the point of inflection. Further, we show that the aftereffect transfers weakly to a compound curve without an inflection, ruling out a general compound curvature detector as an explanation of our findings. We assume however that there are adaptable mechanisms for coding other specific forms of compound curves. Taken together, our findings provide evidence that the human visual system contains specific mechanisms for coding contour inflections, further highlighting their role in shape and object coding.

Perceptual separation of transparent motion components: the interaction of motion, luminance and shape cues.

Transparency is perceived when two or more objects or surfaces can be separated by the visual system whilst they are presented in the same region of the visual field at the same time. This segmentation of distinct entities on the basis of overlapping local visual cues poses an interesting challenge for the understanding of cortical information processing. In psychophysical experiments, we studied stimuli that contained randomly positioned disc elements, moving at two different speeds in the same direction, to analyse the interaction of cues during the perception of motion transparency. The current work extends findings from previous experiments with sine wave luminance gratings which only vary in one spatial dimension. The reported experiments manipulate low-level cues, like differences in speed or luminance, and what are likely to be higher level cues such as the relative size of the elements or the superposition rules that govern overlapping regions. The mechanism responsible for separation appears to be mediated by combination of the relevant and available cues. Where perceived transparency is stronger, the neural representations of components are inferred to be more distinguishable from each other across what appear to be multiple cue dimensions. The disproportionally large effect on transparency strength of the type of superposition of disc suggests that with this manipulation, there may be enhanced separation above what might be expected from the linear combination of low-level cues in a process we term labelling. A mechanism for transparency perception consistent with the current results would require a minimum of three stages; in addition to the local motion detection and global pooling and separation of motion signals, findings suggest a powerful additional role of higher level separation cues.

Evidence for multiple extra-striate mechanisms behind perception of visual motion gradients.

Perceiving motion patterns in visual scenes in which speed or motion direction varies over space while average luminance remains constant presents a processing task that requires at least two separate stages of neural spatio-temporal filtering. We have previously probed the transfer of information between these stages of filtering identifying a largely scale invariant process in which narrowband initial motion sensitive filters are coupled with a broad range of spatial frequencies of secondary filters, with an optimal coupling - in terms of optimal observer visual sensitivity - at a frequency ratio of around twelve. In the current work, we used the same stimulus to investigate the possible presence of multiple secondary filtering mechanisms and their associated bandwidths. Using a forced choice psychophysical task with both a detection and an identification component, we presented experimental blocks containing stimuli with one of two different modulator frequencies in each trial to measure the frequency difference at which the detection performance matched the identification of the frequency. We found that at a frequency differences of about 2.2 octaves, performance of both tasks was similar, and the processing could therefore be inferred to occur in independent frequency channels. The same observation was confirmed for stimuli presented at a longer viewing distance. We conclude that for the motion gradient stimuli, there are secondary filtering mechanisms with a moderately broad bandwidth of over 2 octaves that underlie our sensitivity for detecting motion gradients of different modulation frequency. These are likely to be implemented at least in part within the dorsal stream of extra-striate cortex.