Watson A B, Barlow H B, Robson J G
Nature. 1983;302(5907):419-22. doi: 10.1038/302419a0.
Our eyes see so much in such varied conditions that one might consider the question posed in the title to be meaningless, but we show here that, within the range that we have been able to test, there is a particular spatiotemporal pattern of light that is detected better than any other. At least two plausible theories of visual detection predict that a stimulus will be seen best (will have greatest quantum efficiency) when it matches the weighting function of the most efficient detector. We have measured quantum efficiency for detecting a wide variety of spatiotemporal patterns using foveal vision in bright light. The best stimulus found so far is a small, briefly exposed circular patch of sinusoidal grating having a spatial frequency of approximately 7 c deg-1, drifting at approximately 4 Hz. We propose that this is the weighting function of the most efficient human contrast detector. We believe this answer to the question is unexpected and may have fundamental implications with regard to the mechanisms of visual perception.
我们的眼睛在如此多样的条件下能看到如此多的东西，以至于有人可能会认为标题中提出的问题毫无意义，但我们在此表明，在我们能够测试的范围内，存在一种特定的时空光模式，其被检测的效果比其他任何模式都要好。至少有两种关于视觉检测的合理理论预测，当刺激与最有效探测器的加权函数相匹配时，它将被看得最清楚（具有最高的量子效率）。我们已经在强光下使用中央凹视觉测量了检测各种时空模式的量子效率。到目前为止发现的最佳刺激是一个小的、短暂曝光的正弦光栅圆形斑块，其空间频率约为7 c deg-1，以约4 Hz的速度漂移。我们提出这就是最有效的人类对比度探测器的加权函数。我们认为这个问题的答案出人意料，可能对视觉感知机制具有根本意义。
