Masking and color inheritance along the apparent motion path.

Long-range apparent motion is the illusory motion that can be perceived when two static and distant stimuli are presented in succession. Within some spatiotemporal range not only is motion sensed, but it appears as if one stimulus is displaced from one place to another (termed beta or optimal motion). Several groups have found that this illusory percept can interact with perception of a physically present stimulus, but some disagree on the origin of these interactions. We know little about how suppressive effects depend on feature-similarity between a target and the stimuli in apparent motion (inducers)-which would indicate an early perceptual locus-or even about the minimal conditions under which to obtain this effect. Unlike early studies that used a two-stroke apparent motion paradigm, we were able to demonstrate that motion can mask stimuli presented at interpolated locations along the apparent motion path, as shown by the elevation of contrast thresholds compared to a control condition. Apparent motion masking depended on color similarity between target and inducers. Further, we found evidence that the color of inducers alters the apparent color of intervening gray probes, indicating some inheritance or chromatic averaging across distant locations, but no clear evidence of predictive updating. Finally, the analysis of the presentation times delivering maximal masking effects suggests a predictive interpolation process is responsible for interference by apparent motion filling-in. We discuss alternative mechanisms, in particular the possible role of apparent-motion-induced metacontrast masking in generating this pattern of results.