Motion Aftereffect: A Global Mechanism for the Perception of Rotation

Abstract

Observers adapted to motion by looking at rotating logarithmic spirals. They were tested with a stationary mirror image of the adapting spiral in which all contours were at 90° to those of the first spiral. Motion aftereffects were reported in the contrarotational direction—that is, observers who had seen clockwise rotating motion reported seeing counterclockwise aftereffects. These aftereffects lasted one-third as long as the aftereffects obtained when the adapting spiral was used as the test figure. These two aftereffects were shown to have different storage properties, thereby indexing the operation of at least two different mechanisms. We interpret the motion aftereffect that is obtained with the mirror-image stimulus as indicative of the existence of global rotation detectors.