Temporal Visual Masking by a Contrast-modulated-grating

Abstract

The detection threshold of a brief test stimulus, a sinusoidal grating, was measured as a function of SOA between it and a long-lasting suprathreshold masking stimulus which is a low- or a high-spatial-frequency grating (2 c/deg or 12 c/deg) or a contrast-modulated-grating consisting of three high-frequency components (10,12,14 c/deg), using the same method as Mitov, Vassilev, & Manahilov (1981). The temporal masking functions obtained with a contrast-modulated-masker and a 2 c/deg-sinusoidal-masker exhibited transient on- and off-peaks of masking, while a 12 c/deg-sinusoidal-masker did not exhibit such peaks. As those results were not inconsistent with the “simple” spatial frequency filtering model, two other hypotheses were suggested.