Motion-induced blindness shows spatial anisotropies in conscious perception.

Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is an illusion where a peripheral target disappears from awareness when viewed against a moving background. This study measured how long a target remained visible at eight positions around the visual field. Disappearance times and frequencies varied significantly with target location: targets on the cardinal axes (horizontal and vertical) vanished less often and for shorter periods than those on oblique axes, and targets on the horizontal meridian vanished less than those on the vertical. These polar angle asymmetries in MIB suggest that conscious visual perception is not uniform across the visual field, with specific consistencies between visual field location and the timing of perceptual disappearances.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Polar angle asymmetries (PAAs), the differences in perceptual experiences and performance across different regions of the visual field are present in various paradigms and tasks of visual perception. Currently, research in this area is sparse, particularly regarding the influence of PAAs during perceptual illusions, highlighting a gap in visual cognition studies. We aim to fill this gap by measuring PAAs across the visual field during an illusion applied to test conscious vision widely. Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is an illusion when a peripheral target disappears from consciousness as the result of a continuously moving background pattern. During MIB we separately measured the average disappearance time of peripheral targets in eight equidistant visual field positions. Our results indicate a significant variation in MIB disappearance times and frequencies as a function of target location. Specifically, we found shorter and fewer disappearances along the cardinal compared to oblique directions, and along the horizontal compared to the vertical meridian. Our results suggest specific consistencies between visual field asymmetries and conscious visual perception.