Evidence for a Common Motion Mechanism of Luminance-Modulated and Contrast-Modulated Patterns: Selective Adaptation

Selective adaptation effects were measured with contrast-modulated patterns and sine-wave gratings in order to determine the extent to which the two patterns are processed by common mechanisms. Direction-specific adaptation effects were measured for a contrast-modulated adapting pattern and a test pattern. The contrast-modulated adapting pattern was composed of a sine-wave grating of 8 cycles deg⁻¹ whose contrast was spatially modulated by a sinusoid of 1 cycle deg⁻¹ at one of four levels: 100%, 60%, 30%, or 0%. The results showed that contrast-modulation thresholds for contrast-modulated gratings were raised by 0.3 to 0.5 log units following adaptation to a contrast-modulated grating moving in the same direction as the test pattern, relative to thresholds obtained following adaptation to a contrast-modulated grating moving in the opposite direction. Cross-adaptation effects were also measured with a sine-wave adapting pattern and a contrast-modulated test pattern. The sine-wave adapting pattern was a sine-wave grating of 1 cycle deg⁻¹ whose contrast was set to one of three levels: 16.4%, 1.25%, or 0%. The contrast-modulated test pattern was a sine-wave grating of 8 cycles deg⁻¹ whose contrast was modulated by a sinusoid of 1 cycle deg⁻¹. The results revealed that contrast-modulation thresholds for contrast-modulated gratings were raised by approximately 0.25 log units following adaptation to moving sine-wave gratings, relative to thresholds obtained following adaptation to a uniform field. Cross-adaptation effects were also obtained with a contrast-modulated adapting pattern and a sine-wave test pattern. The results support the view that signals generated from luminance-domain stimuli and from contrast-domain stimuli are processed by a common motion mechanism.