Inhibition of target detection in apparent motion trajectory

Letter discrimination performance is degraded when a letter is presented within an apparent motion (AM) trajectory of a spot. This finding suggests that the internal representation of AM stimuli can perceptually interact with other stimuli. In this study, we demonstrated that AM interference could also occur for pattern detection. We found that target (Gabor patch) detection performance was degraded within an AM trajectory. Further, this AM interference weakened when the differences in orientation between the AM stimuli and target became greater. We also revealed that AM interference occurred for the target with spatiotemporally intermediate orientations of the inducers that changed their orientation during AM. In contrast, the differences in phase among the stimuli did not affect the occurrence of AM interference. These findings suggest that AM stimuli and their internal representations affect lower visual processes involved in detecting a pattern in the AM trajectory and that the internal object representation of an AM stimulus selectively reflects and maintains the stimulus attribute.