Volume 8, Number 4, Article 22, Pages 1-14 doi:10.1167/8.4.22 http://journalofvision.org/8/4/22/ ISSN 1534-7362
Amblyopic perception of biological motion
Benjamin Thompson
McGill Vision Research, Department of Ophthalmology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
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Nikolaus F. Troje
Department of Psychology, Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
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Bruce C. Hansen
Department of Psychology, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York, USA
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Robert F. Hess
McGill Vision Research, Department of Ophthalmology, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
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Abstract

Although a number of low-level visual deficits in amblyopia have been identified, it is still unclear to what extent these deficits extend throughout the visual processing hierarchy. Biological motion perception can be a useful measure of local and global visual processing since the point-light stimuli that are often used to study this ability carry both local motion and global form information. To investigate the integrity of the biological motion processing system in amblyopia, we employed both detection and discrimination tasks with coherent or scrambled point-light walkers either alone or embedded in different types of point-light masks. These manipulations allowed for control over the amount of form and/or motion information available to the observers that could be used for task performance. We found that amblyopic eyes could process both the global form and local motion components of point-light walkers, indicating intact processing for these stimuli. However, amblyopic eyes did show an increased susceptibility to the addition of masking dots suggesting that segregation of signal from noise is deficient in amblyopia.

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History
Received February 18, 2008; published April 23, 2008
Citation
Thompson, B., Troje, N. F., Hansen, B. C., & Hess, R. F. (2008). Amblyopic perception of biological motion. Journal of Vision, 8(4):22, 1-14, http://journalofvision.org/8/4/22/, doi:10.1167/8.4.22.
Keywords
amblyopia, biological motion, inversion effect, global form, local motion, segregation
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