Spatial frequency, orientation and color: Interocular effects of adaptation on the perceived duration of gratings

Abstract

Previous studies reported that a grating presented for 50 msec may have a subjective duration of several hundred milliseconds. Furthermore, this subjective persistence could be reduced by adaptation to a grating of similar spatial frequency, orientation and color. Interestingly, spatially contingent adaptation demonstrated interocular transfer while color-contingency only was shown monocularly. The present study demonstrates that visual persistence decrements simultaneously specific to color, orientation and spatial frequency can be produced interocularly. This was done by a form of dichoptic adaptation consisting of a colored grating presented to the eye not tested and a blank field of the same color to the tested eye. However, an achromatic blank field did not facilitate interocular transfer when presented dichoptically with the colored grating. The results are in accord with recent findings suggesting that interocular transfer of the McCollough effect can be produced by similar techniques.