2002 年 21 巻 1 号 p. 51-52
Synchrony is an important factor for binding visual information across space. It is also one of the basic attributes in time perception. To understand the mechanism underlying synchrony perception I explored visual grouping based on the 'synchrony of orientation' between spatially separated patterns whose orientations changed periodically in time. The results showed that the central element tended to be grouped not with the element whose orientation changed in a physical synchrony but with the element whose orientation changed slightly earlier. Moreover, this tendency became more profound as the spatial distance between elements increased. This illusory synchrony was explained by a proposal that synchrony perception is mediated by spatial interactions between feature detectors, which essentially involve mutual delays of propagating signals.