Image velocity, not tau, explains arrival-time judgments from global optical flow.

Abstract

The time-to-passage (TTP; i.e., the time) until an object passes an observer is optically specified by global tau, a variable that operates on the expansion rate of the angle subtended by an object relative to the observer's heading. M. K. Kaiser and L. Mowafy (1993) provided evidence for observers' sensitivity to global tau in a 3-D cloud of point lights. This interpretation is challenged, and it is suggested that TTP judgments are based on a related but much simpler variable, the image velocity of the object. The present study reexamined several factors that are relevant for the extraction of global tau. When global tau and image velocity were brought into conflict by varying the lateral offsets of the targets, observers showed a strong tendency to rely on the latter variable. Other factors that are supposed to affect TTP judgments only if observers relied on global tau, such as flow-field density and gazemovement angle, did not affect performance.