Blending Transparent Motion Patterns in Peripheral Vision

Human observers are very good at segmenting visual scenes consisting of multiple moving objects. Segregation of transparent motions, however, turns out to be a predominantly central vision process. In peripheral vision transparent motions are blended to form a single novel pattern whose coherent motion corresponds to the average of the separate motions, whilst sensitivity to small differences in coherent motion is maintained. These results point to distinct peripheral processing mechanisms with the advantage of being able to detect changes in motion fields quickly and accurately.