Cancelling Flash Illusory Line Motion by Cancelling the Attentional Gradient and a Consideration of Consciousness

Abstract

Illusory line motion (ILM) refers to the perception of motion in a line that is, in fact, presented in full at one time. One form of this illusion (flashILM) occurs when the line is presented between two objects following a brief luminance change in one of them and flashILM is thought to result from exogenous attention being captured by the flash. Exogenous attention fades with increasing delays, which predicts that flashILM should show a similar temporal pattern. Exogenous attention appears to follow flashILM to become more or less equally distributed along the line.The current study examines flashILM in order to test these predictions derived from the attentional explanation for flashILM and the results were consistent with them. The discussion then concludes with an exploratory analysis approach concerning states of consciousness and decision making and suggests a possible role for attention.