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Detection of motion onset and offset: reaction time and visual evoked potential analysis

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Abstract

Manual reaction time (RT) and visual evoked potentials (VEP) were measured in motion onset and offset detection tasks. A considerable homology was observed between the temporal structure of RTs and VEP intervals, provided that the change in motion was detected as soon as the VEP signal has reached critical threshold amplitude. Both manual reactions and VEP rise in latency as the velocity of the onset or offset motion decreases and were well approximated by the same negative power function with the exponent close to −2/3. This indicates that motion processing is normalised by subtracting the initial motion vector from ongoing motion. A comparison of the motion onset VEP signals in two different conditions, in one of which the observer was instructed to abstain from the reaction and in the other to indicate as fast as possible the beginning of the motion, contained accurate information about the manual response.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Tiit Mogom for technical assistance and programming, Anne Must for running the experiments and Raili Põldsaar for language-correction of an early version of the manuscript. This study was supported by a grant from the Estonian Science Foundation (6244).

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  1. University of Tartu and the ECBHS, Tiigi 78, Tartu, 50410, Estonia

    Kairi Kreegipuu & Jüri Allik

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  1. Kairi Kreegipuu
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  2. Jüri Allik
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Correspondence to Kairi Kreegipuu.

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Kreegipuu, K., Allik, J. Detection of motion onset and offset: reaction time and visual evoked potential analysis. Psychological Research 71, 703–708 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-006-0059-1

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