Detecting change in the environment is a fundamental purpose of vision, and much of this change is associated with displacements. The visual system has remarkably broad spatial, temporal, and featural tuning for motion detection; there are few behaviorally-relevant displacements that will go unnoticed.
This research explores the 1) the rules for organizing the shifts of small, local, elements into the motion of a large, global, field; 2) the influence of visual attention on motion processing; and 3) the generality with which motion can be defined (a shifting pattern of luminance yields an introspective impression of motion, but why not a similarly shifting pattern of male and female faces?).
Related publications:
papers
Blaser, E. & Sperling, G. (Revise and resubmit) When is motion motion? Cognition.
Blaser, E., Papathomas, T.V., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2005). Binding of motion and colour is local and automatic. European Journal of Neuroscience, 21, 2040-2044
Sohn, W., Papathomas, T., Blaser, E., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2004). Object-based cross-attribute attentional modulation from color to motion. Vision Research, 44, 1437-1443.
Vidnyanszky, Z., Blaser, E., & Papathomas, T. (2002). Motion integration during motion aftereffects. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 6, 157-161.
Blaser, E., Sperling, G., & Lu, Z-L. (1999). Measuring the amplification of attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96, 11681-11686.
see also:
Snowden, R. (2000) In clear and vivid form? [Discussion of Blaser, Sperling, & Lu (1999)]. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 40.
presentations
Blaser, E., Papathomas, T., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2003). Polarity-contingent motion aftereffects at the stage of local motion processing. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL
Sohn, W., Papathomas, T., Blaser, E., & Vidnyanszky, Z. (2003). Object-based cross- attribute attentional effects in bivectorial motion. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL
Blaser, E., Vidnyanszky, Z., & Papathomas, T. (2002). Relative motion, not polarity, breaks ‘surface tension’. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL
Sohn, W., Blaser, E., Vidnyanszky, Z., & Papathomas, T. (2002). Surface based mechanisms of attentional facilitation and inhibition in motion perception. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL
Vidnyanszky, Z., Blaser, E., & Papathomas, T. (2001). An explanation for unidirectional motion aftereffects following adaptation to bivectorial transparent motion. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL
Sohn, W., Vidnyanszky, Z., Blaser, E., & Papathomas, T. (2001). Attention to one component of bivectorial transparent motion strongly inhibits the processing of the unattended component. The Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society (VSS), Sarasota, FL
