Cognition and Perception Commons^™

Solving The Aperture Problem: Perception Of Coherent Motion, Lindsey Shain

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

The aperture problem describes an effect by which a contoured stimulus, moving behind an aperture with both ends occluded, appears to move in a direction perpendicular to its own orientation. Mechanisms within the human visual system allow us to overcome this problem and integrate many of these locally ambiguous signals into the perception of globally coherent motion. In the current experiment, observers viewed displays composed of many straight contours, arranged in varying orientations and moving behind apertures. The total pattern of movement was consistent with a globally coherent trajectory. Observers were asked to estimate direction of global motion over a …