PERCEPTUAL-LEARNING IN SEEING FORM FROM MOTION

Abstract

Some perceptual tasks, such as global stereopsis, have been shown to improve with practice. Paradigms that involve such 'perceptual learning' have been exploited to learn more about the nature and sites of these perceptual tasks in the brain and about plasticity in the adult central nervous system. We found that seeing structure from global motion in some kinematograms composed of tilted line elements required a period of learning. However, such learning was specific neither to the orientation of the line elements nor to the direction of global motion, even though detection of these line elements and the direction of motion was necessary for seeing the global structure in these kinematograms..