The spatial frequency and orientation selectivity of the mechanisms that extract motion-defined contours

The human visual system can undertake a specialized form of motion integration, one that enables the presence of extended spatial contours to be disambiguated from their backgrounds. We have shown previously that the visual system can selectively integrate local motion signals when their directions are along spatial contours and its efficiency is inversely related to the curvature of the contour involved (Ledgeway, T., & Hess, R. F. (2002). Vision Research, 42, 653–659). This integration primarily involves the direction, rather than the speed, of local motion signals. In the present study, we sought to investigate both the spatial frequency and orientation tuning of this specialized contour integration process, using a path detection paradigm. The results show that the tuning for spatial frequency is very broad, in line with previous studies that have examined this issue. In contrast, the orientation selectivity of the mechanism mediating contour extraction under these conditions is relatively narrowband. Thus, spatial frequency but not orientation pooling appears to take place prior to the extraction of motion-defined contours, a situation that is different from that previously shown for spatial contours composed of static, oriented elements.