Perceptual Metamers For Gaze-Dependent Displays: Peripheral Color–Motion Misbinding Without Robust Neural Adaptation

Lana Okubo^1,2 (lanaokubo@gmail.com), Shin'ya Nishida¹; ¹Kyoto University, ²Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

Gaze-dependent displays often reduce peripheral resolution to save computational resources, exploiting the fact that peripheral vision is less sensitive to spatial detail. In this context, the degraded version of a scene serves as a perceptual "metamer" to the intact version. Psychological studies suggest that this metamer concept could be pushed further: not just resolution, but even the identity of objects in the periphery can be altered without being noticed. In color–motion misbinding, observers persistently experience vivid but incorrect pairings between color and motion: for example, peripheral green dots moving upward may be perceived as red. Importantly, these illusory pairings have been reported to produce color-contingent motion aftereffects (misbinding CCMAE; Zhang et al., 2014), suggesting that misbinding occurs at a processing stage capable of driving adaptation, potentially involving neurons jointly selective for color and motion. We quantified the strength of this misbinding CCMAE, using a broader range of motion speeds than previously studied. Observers adapted to random-dot stimuli under two conditions: in peripheral regions where misbinding occurs versus regions where it does not. Psychometric functions were fitted to each participant's directional judgments of test stimuli, and Bayesian analysis compared thresholds and slopes between conditions. The results revealed no conclusive difference in thresholds between the misbinding and control conditions across multiple speeds, unlike the previous report. This pattern suggests that perceptual misbinding does not necessarily rely on feature-contingent adaptation effects within low-level motion processing, as has been hypothesized. Instead, misbinding may involve higher-level visual processing in which illusory feature bindings do not evoke adaptation comparable to that induced by veridical stimuli. These findings offer new insights into the mechanisms of peripheral metamers and have implications for the development of efficient gaze-dependent display technologies: while peripheral content is subjectively altered, it may not produce the same neural signatures as veridical stimuli.

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