Scharlau Ingrid
Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Germany.
Adv Cogn Psychol. 2008 Jul 15;3(1-2):241-55. doi: 10.2478/v10053-008-0028-x.
Visual backward masking is frequently used to study the temporal dynamics of visual perception. These dynamics may include the temporal features of conscious percepts, as suggested, for instance, by the asynchronous-updating model (Neumann, 1982) and perceptual-retouch theory ((Bachmann, 1994). These models predict that the perceptual latency of a visual backward mask is shorter than that of a like reference stimulus that was not preceded by a masked stimulus. The prediction has been confirmed by studies using temporal-order judgments: For certain asynchronies between mask and reference stimulus, temporal-order reversals are quite frequent (e.g. Scharlau, & Neumann, 2003a). However, it may be argued that these reversals were due to a response bias in favour of the mask rather than true temporal-perceptual effects. I introduce two measures for assessing latency effects that (1) are not prone to such a response bias, (2) allow to quantify the latency gain, and (3) extend the perceptual evidence from order reversals to duration/interval perception, that is, demonstrate that the perceived interval between a mask and a reference stimulus may be shortened as well as prolonged by the presence of a masked stimulus. Consequences for theories of visual masking such as asynchronous-updating, perceptual-retouch, and reentrant models are discussed.
视觉后向掩蔽常用于研究视觉感知的时间动态。这些动态可能包括意识知觉的时间特征，例如，异步更新模型（诺伊曼，1982年）和知觉润饰理论（巴赫曼，1994年）所表明的那样。这些模型预测，视觉后向掩蔽的感知潜伏期比没有被掩蔽刺激先行的类似参考刺激的潜伏期要短。这一预测已被使用时间顺序判断的研究所证实：对于掩蔽和参考刺激之间的某些异步情况，时间顺序反转相当频繁（例如，沙劳和诺伊曼，2003a）。然而，可能有人认为，这些反转是由于有利于掩蔽的反应偏差，而不是真正的时间感知效应。我介绍了两种评估潜伏期效应的方法，（1）不容易出现这种反应偏差，（2）允许量化潜伏期增益，（3）将感知证据从顺序反转扩展到持续时间/间隔感知，也就是说，证明掩蔽刺激的存在可能会缩短或延长掩蔽和参考刺激之间的感知间隔。讨论了视觉掩蔽理论（如异步更新、知觉润饰和折返模型）的后果。
