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A unique visual rhythm does not pop out

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Abstract

We investigated attentional demands in visual rhythm perception of periodically moving stimuli using a visual search paradigm. A dynamic search display consisted of vertically “bouncing dots” with regular rhythms. The search target was defined by a unique visual rhythm (i.e., a shorter or longer period) among rhythmic distractors with identical periods. We found that search efficiency for a faster or a slower periodically moving target decreased as the number of distractors increased, although searching for a faster target was about one second faster than searching for a slower target. We conclude that perception of a visual rhythm defined by a unique period is not a “pop-out” process, but a serial one that demands considerable attention.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the grants from China Scholarship Council and LMU to Hui Li, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91120004 and 31371018) to Yan Bao, the Parmenides Foundation to Yan Bao and Ernst Pöppel, and the Bavarian Research Foundation to Yi-Huang Su.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Medical Psychology and Human Science Center, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany

    Hui Li, Ernst Pöppel & Yi-Huang Su

  2. Department of Psychology and Key Laboratory of Machine Perception (MoE), Peking University, 5 Yiheyuan Road, Beijing, 100871, China

    Yan Bao

  3. Parmenides Center for Art and Science, Pullach, Germany

    Yan Bao & Ernst Pöppel

  4. Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Ernst Pöppel

  5. Department of Movement Science, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany

    Yi-Huang Su

Authors
  1. Hui Li
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  2. Yan Bao
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  3. Ernst Pöppel
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  4. Yi-Huang Su
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yan Bao.

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Li, H., Bao, Y., Pöppel, E. et al. A unique visual rhythm does not pop out. Cogn Process 15, 93–97 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-013-0581-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-013-0581-1

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