Temporal coherence in visual rotation

The brain can predict and estimate motion based on visual translation. This paper addresses whether the visual system also has a specialized mechanism of temporal coherence for rotational motion. To do this, we measured the perceived mislocation of a rotating dot at the time of its luminance transition. Results show that subjects mislocate the dot consistently with its circular motion rather than with translational temporal coherence. We propose a model to explain these results based on a combination of an error in a location-estimation task and on the brain assuming rotational motions.