Perceptual transparency requires local same-polarity X-junctions, which can also be generated by temporal integration under natural dynamic conditions. In this study, segmentation performance and target appearance were measured for a uniform gray target embedded in a random-dot frame presented with a temporally adjacent mask. Although static cues for both segmentation and transparency were unav...

When a masking picture follows some initial stimulus picture, subsequent memory performance for the stimulus is reduced, even when the mask is delayed by 300 ms following stimulus offset. Such a delay is sufftciently long that all perceptual traces of the stimulus have vanished, and therefore the inferred effect of the mask is to interrupt conceptual as opposed to perceptual processing of the s...

To inform the design of haptic information displays for noisy environments, we investigated two mechanisms for temporal masking of vibrotactile stimuli (backwards and common-onset) using a commodity display. We used a two-channel setup, presenting stimuli to the middle and ring finger of a participant's right hand. The stimuli consisted of 250 Hz sinusoidal waveforms displayed at a fixed amplit...

Object substitution masking (OSM) is said to occur on an object level without a close spatiotemporal proximity of target and mask. An influential account for OSM is "object updating," which espouses that OSM occurs when the target is updated by the mask as they share a single object representation. However, it is unclear what attribute determines whether the mask shares the same object represen...

We studied the effects of selective attention on metacontrast masking with 3 different cueing experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 compared central symbolic and peripheral spatial cues. For symbolic cues, we observed small attentional costs, that is, reduced visibility when the target appeared at an unexpected location, and attentional costs as well as benefits for peripheral cues. All these effect...

We investigated the role of color in the feature integration process for global form perception. For this, we used a 2AFC noise masking paradigm to measure the color selectivity of the symmetry detection mechanism. In each trial, a vertical symmetric target was randomly presented in one of the two intervals while a random dot control, in the other. The observers' task was to determine which int...

Temporal integration in the visual system causes fast-moving objects to leave oriented 'motion streaks' in their wake, which could be used to facilitate motion direction perception. Temporal integration is thought to occur over ≈100 ms in early cortex, although this has never been tested for motion streaks. Here we compare the ability of fast-moving ('streaky') and slow-moving fields of dots to...

Recent NICMOS observations of the central regions of nearby barred galaxies, NGC5383, NGC1530 and NGC1667 by Regan, Sheth and Mulchaey (1999), all show, in the unsharp mask map, a pair of distinct trailing spirals which can be followed all the way to the center. This result is in apparent conflict with the density wave theory. In this report, we argue that this difficulty may be removed if we t...

Previous research has revealed that dyslexic children may be more sensitive to backward-masking effects in auditory perception than control children. In this study, we asked whether a CV transition masks a preceding VC transition to a greater extent in dyslexic children than in controls. The results suggest that dyslexic children are severely impaired on the discrimination of VC sequences, rega...

Spatial separation of speech and noise in an anechoic space creates a release from masking that often improves speech intelligibility. However, the masking release is severely reduced in reverberant spaces. This study investigated whether the distinct and separate localization of speech and interference provides any perceptual advantage that, due to the precedence effect, is not degraded by ref...