Studying the Effects of Natural Visual Scene Changes on Typical Adult Visual Perception

NCT05004649 | Completed Results

• 2 other identifiers: 305435K99NS118117
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 19
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

The natural visual environment is complex and rich with different stimuli and features. The visual system must constantly extract behaviorally relevant visual information from an abundance of irrelevant information in the visual scene. To complicate matters further, the visual feature or stimulus that is most relevant at any given moment can change quickly and frequently in realistic visual environments. The mechanisms by which task-relevant information guides perceptual behavior are not fully understood. In this study, psychophysical experiments will be used to measure participants' ability to discriminate the horizontal position of a central object within a complex, natural visual scene, as well as to measure how that ability is affected by within-trial variability in the features of background objects in the scene. The goal of this study is to investigate the overarching prediction that the visual system extracts task-relevant information in a manner that reflects realistically complex visual environments in which the stimuli change quickly and frequently. Specifically, this study will test the hypothesis that task-irrelevant variability in the scene affects participants' ability to discriminate the visual feature that is relevant to the task at hand.

Conditions

Visual Perception

Keywords

Perception; Sensory Processing; Vision

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (1)

• Psychophysical Measurements of Horizontal Discrimination Threshold

  A psychophysical task will be used to measure participants' ability to discriminate the horizontal position of the central object that is presented within the context of background objects in a natural visual scene. The task will be a two-interval forced choice task that presents one stimulus per interval. The task will be to determine whether, compared to the central object presented in the first interval, the central object presented in the second interval is to the left or to the right. The horizontal discrimination threshold is reported below as a function of noise in the stimulus. The horizontal discrimination threshold is defined as the minimum distance in which two stimuli can be recognized as spatially separate in the horizontal plane. The lower the horizontal discrimination threshold the smaller the difference between two stimuli in the horizontal direction to be perceived as distinct.

  Approximately 3 weeks

Study Arms (1)

Healthy participants

EXPERIMENTAL

Participants will be excluded prior to the experiment if their best-corrected visual acuity is worse than 20/40 in either eye or if they make any errors on the Ishihara plate test. For enrolled participants, their threshold for horizontal position discrimination will be calculated based on their performance on the experimental task during their first session. Participants will be excluded after the conclusion of their first session if their horizontal position discrimination threshold in the control condition is higher than a maximum value of 0.6 degrees of visual angle, and participants excluded at this point will not participate in any further experimental sessions.

Behavioral: Psychophysical task

Interventions

Psychophysical task BEHAVIORAL

A psychophysical task will be used to measure participants' ability to discriminate the horizontal position of the central object that is presented within the context of background objects in a natural visual scene. The task will be a two-interval forced choice task that presents one stimulus per interval. Between the two stimulus intervals, two masks will be shown in succession at the center of the monitor. The task of the participant will be to determine whether, compared to the central object presented in the first interval, the central object presented in the second interval is to the left or to the right. One of two feedback tones will be presented after the response is entered, indicating whether the participant was correct or incorrect. For trials in which there is no difference in the position of the central object between the two intervals, the response that will receive the correct feedback tone will be randomly selected per trial.

Healthy participants

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 18 Years+
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Adult (18-64), Older Adult (65+)

You may qualify if:

• Normal visual acuity
• Capable of giving informed consent
• Fully vaccinated against COVID-19

You may not qualify if:

• Known color deficiencies
• Diagnosis of retinal disease or inherited retinal disease from family history
• A psychophysical threshold for horizontal position discrimination that is greater than 0.6 degrees of visual angle (to be determined during the first experimental session)

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Pennsylvania: lead
• National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS): collaborator

Study Sites (1)

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, United States

Location

Related Publications (13)

• Brainard DH. The Psychophysics Toolbox. Spat Vis. 1997;10(4):433-6.

  PMID: 9176952 BACKGROUND

• Cottaris NP, Jiang H, Ding X, Wandell BA, Brainard DH. A computational-observer model of spatial contrast sensitivity: Effects of wave-front-based optics, cone-mosaic structure, and inference engine. J Vis. 2019 Apr 1;19(4):8. doi: 10.1167/19.4.8.

  PMID: 30943530 BACKGROUND

• Cottaris NP, Wandell BA, Rieke F, Brainard DH. A computational observer model of spatial contrast sensitivity: Effects of photocurrent encoding, fixational eye movements, and inference engine. J Vis. 2020 Jul 1;20(7):17. doi: 10.1167/jov.20.7.17.

  PMID: 32692826 BACKGROUND

• DiCarlo JJ, Cox DD. Untangling invariant object recognition. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007 Aug;11(8):333-41. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2007.06.010. Epub 2007 Jul 16.

  PMID: 17631409 BACKGROUND

• DiCarlo JJ, Zoccolan D, Rust NC. How does the brain solve visual object recognition? Neuron. 2012 Feb 9;73(3):415-34. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.01.010.

  PMID: 22325196 BACKGROUND

• Gauthier I, Tarr MJ. Visual Object Recognition: Do We (Finally) Know More Now Than We Did? Annu Rev Vis Sci. 2016 Oct 14;2:377-396. doi: 10.1146/annurev-vision-111815-114621. Epub 2016 Aug 3.

  PMID: 28532357 BACKGROUND

• Heasly BS, Cottaris NP, Lichtman DP, Xiao B, Brainard DH. RenderToolbox3: MATLAB tools that facilitate physically based stimulus rendering for vision research. J Vis. 2014 Feb 7;14(2):6. doi: 10.1167/14.2.6.

  PMID: 24511145 BACKGROUND

• Ni AM, Huang C, Doiron B, Cohen MR. A general decoding strategy explains the relationship between behavior and correlated variability. Elife. 2022 Jun 6;11:e67258. doi: 10.7554/eLife.67258.

  PMID: 35660134 BACKGROUND

• Ni AM, Ruff DA, Alberts JJ, Symmonds J, Cohen MR. Learning and attention reveal a general relationship between population activity and behavior. Science. 2018 Jan 26;359(6374):463-465. doi: 10.1126/science.aao0284.

  PMID: 29371470 BACKGROUND

• Prins N, Kingdom FAA. Applying the Model-Comparison Approach to Test Specific Research Hypotheses in Psychophysical Research Using the Palamedes Toolbox. Front Psychol. 2018 Jul 23;9:1250. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01250. eCollection 2018.

  PMID: 30083122 BACKGROUND

• Ruff DA, Ni AM, Cohen MR. Cognition as a Window into Neuronal Population Space. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2018 Jul 8;41:77-97. doi: 10.1146/annurev-neuro-080317-061936.

  PMID: 29799773 BACKGROUND

• Singh V, Cottaris NP, Heasly BS, Brainard DH, Burge J. Computational luminance constancy from naturalistic images. J Vis. 2018 Dec 3;18(13):19. doi: 10.1167/18.13.19.

  PMID: 30593061 BACKGROUND

• Singh V, Burge J, Brainard DH. Equivalent noise characterization of human lightness constancy. J Vis. 2022 Apr 6;22(5):2. doi: 10.1167/jov.22.5.2.

  PMID: 35394508 BACKGROUND

Results Point of Contact

• Title: Dr. David Brainard
• Organization: University of Pennsylvania

brainard@psych.upenn.edu

215-573-7579

Study Officials

• Amy M. Ni, Ph.D.

  University of Pennsylvania

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

• David H. Brainard, Ph.D.

  University of Pennsylvania

  STUDY DIRECTOR

Publication Agreements

• PI is Sponsor Employee: No
• Restrictive Agreement: No

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: not applicable
• Allocation: NA
• Masking: NONE
• Purpose: BASIC SCIENCE
• Intervention Model: SINGLE GROUP
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: SPONSOR

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: August 6, 2021
• First Posted: August 13, 2021
• Study Start: August 9, 2021
• Primary Completion: March 23, 2022
• Study Completion: March 23, 2022
• Last Updated: May 10, 2023
• Results First Posted: May 10, 2023

Record last verified: 2023-05

Locations

US (1)