Abstract

The effect of surround luminance on relative latency of response to a test stimulus was measured with the perceived-order method in which asynchrony between two lights is varied to make the lights appear subjectively simultaneous. Increasing surround luminance from zero to levels high enough to impair test-stimulus detectability resulted in reduction of test-stimulus latency (facilitation of response speed) by 100 ms both in the rod-free area of the fovea and in the periphery. Since appreciable facilitation of response speed was obtained in the rod-free area of the fovea, suppression of visual noise would seem to be a more plausible explanation of the facilitation effect than inhibition of rod activity. Variation of surround luminance was also found to have a much greater effect than variation of test-stimulus luminance.

© 1971 Optical Society of America

Effects of Surround Luminance on Perceptual Latency*

Halsey H. Matteson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 60(8) 1125-1131 (1970)

Visual Latency as a Function of Stimulus Onset, Offset, and Background Luminance*

Ralph W. Hansteen
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 61(9) 1190-1195 (1971)

Effects of Surround Size and Luminance on Metacontrast*

Halsey H. Matteson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 59(11) 1461-1468 (1969)

Comparison of Two Measures of Metacontrast*

Thomas B. Flaherty and Halsey H. Matteson
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 61(6) 828-830 (1971)

Temporal facilitation and stroboscopic motion*

Halsey H. Matteson and Joel H. Lewis
J. Opt. Soc. Am. 69(1) 92-95 (1979)