THEORY AND MEASUREMENT OF VISUAL MECHANISMS

Abstract

The relation between flash duration and mean critical intensity (white light) for threshold recognition of visual flicker, as a function of flash frequency, was investigated by means of measurements at five values of the light-time fraction: 0.10, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, 0.90, with flash frequencies of the interrupted beam ranging from 2 to 60 per second. A square area, 6.1 x 6.1°, centrally fixated) was viewed monocularly; the discriminometer used provides automatically an artificial pupil 1.8 mm. in diameter. Except for the slight day-to-day fluctuation in the magnitudes of the parameters, the data for the observer used are shown to form an essentially homogeneous group. As for other animals tested, the F - log Im curve is enlarged and moved toward lower flash intensities as the light-time fraction is decreased. The high intensity segments of the duplex curves are fitted by normal probability integrals for which F max. and the abscissa of inflection are rectilinear functions of tL(tL + tD), with opposite slopes. The third parameter, (σ'log I, is invariant. The low intensity segments are composites, their shapes determined by the summation of the lower part of the high intensity curve with an overlapping low intensity population of effects. Both the rising and the declining branches of this latter assemblage suffer competitive partial suppression by the effects in the high intensity population. The detailed analysis shows that these results are consistent with the theory of the central, rather than peripheral, location of the dynamically recognizable elements in the determination of flicker.