A paradox of temporal perception revealed by a stimulus oscillating in colour and orientation

• Published in: Vision research (Oxford) Vol. 43; no. 21; pp. 2245 - 2253
• Main Authors: Clifford, Colin W.G., Arnold, Derek H., Pearson, Joel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2003; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Color; Colour vision; Computational model; Contrast Sensitivity; Flicker Fusion; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human psychophysics; Humans; Orientation; Perception; Perceptual binding; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Sensory coding; Spatial vision; Time Perception; Vision; Visual cortex; Visual Cortex - physiology; Visual Perception - physiology; Human psychophysics; Visual cortex; Perceptual binding; Sensory coding; Computational model; Spatial vision; Colour vision; Time perception; Human; Color; Spatial orientation; Cognition; Space perception; Psychophysics; Vision; Perception
• DOI: 10.1016/S0042-6989(03)00120-2
• ISSN: 0042-6989

Psychophysical experiments with stimuli oscillating concurrently in colour and orientation revealed an apparently paradoxical dissociation between the perceived simultaneity of stimulus changes and the perceptual pairing of the events demarked by those changes. When subjects were required to report whether changes in colour and orientation were simultaneous, judgements were generally accurate within ±10 ms. When subjects were required to report which colour was paired predominantly with which orientation, judgements showed a systematic temporal bias of up to 50 ms in favour of colour. This dissociation between different temporal judgements concerning the same stimulus sequence is not predicted by any of the current models of binding in conscious vision. We propose an account of these data based on the temporal response properties of colour- and orientation-selective model neurons such that the perceived pairing of visual attributes is modelled as the cross-correlation of time-varying neural response profiles and thus reflects both neuronal latencies and the rate of rapid adaptation rather than simply the temporal pattern of responses to stimulus transitions.