Illusory position shift induced by cyclopean motion

Abstract

The position of a visual pattern moving within a static aperture appears to be displaced in the direction of motion. This illusory position shift can be induced by luminance-defined as well as contrast-defined motion. The present study used a random-dot binocular correlogram in which a moving square-wave grating was solely defined by binocular correlations. This cyclopean motion was found to induce illusory position shift. Consistent with previous reports on position shift induced by second-order motion, the illusion was smaller than that found in the case of the first-order motion. This pattern of results unequivocally demonstrates the existence of a binocular mechanism mediating this illusion.