The effects of spatial offset, temporal offset and image speed on sensitivity to global motion in human amblyopia

•Speed, spatial and temporal offset affect sensitivity to global motion independently.•Amblyopic eye thresholds were higher overall than the other eyes.•Amblyopic eye thresholds appear independent of the method used to create motion.•Amblyopic eye thresholds appear independent of speed.

The presence of a general global motion processing deficit in amblyopia is now well established, although its severity may depend on image speed and amblyopia type, but its underlying cause(s) is still largely indeterminate. To address this issue and to characterize further the nature of the global motion perception deficit in human amblyopia, the effects of varying spatial offset (jump size—Δs) and temporal offset (delay between positional updates—Δt) in discriminating global motion for a range of speeds (1.5, 3 and 9 °/s) in both amblyopic and normal vision were evaluated. For normal adult observers (NE) and the non-amblyopic eye (FE) motion coherence thresholds measured when Δt was varied were significantly higher than those when Δs was varied. Furthermore when Δt was varied, thresholds rose significantly as the speed of image motion decreased for both NEs and FEs. AE thresholds were higher overall than the other eyes and appeared independent of both the method used to create movement and speed. These results suggest that the spatial and temporal limits underlying the perception of global motion are different. In addition degrading the smoothness of motion has comparatively little effect on the motion mechanisms driven by the AE, suggesting that the internal noise associated with encoding motion direction is relatively high.