Temporal-discontinuity detection with contrast-modulated gratings

Three experiments on temporal-discontinuity detection were carried out. In experiment 1, temporal-discontinuity thresholds were measured for sinusoidal gratings by the use of the double-staircase method. A sinusoidal grating was presented twice successively. The subject judged whether or not an interval was present. The temporal-discontinuity threshold increased as the spatial frequency of the grating increased, but decreased as the contrast of the grating increased. In experiment 2, contrast-modulated gratings were used instead of the sinusoidal grating. The temporal-discontinuity threshold increased as the carrier frequency increased, and the threshold for each contrast-modulated grating was similar to that for the no-modulation (sinusoidal) grating whose contrast was the same as the maximum local contrast of the contrast-modulated grating. In experiment 3, temporal-discontinuity thresholds were measured for low-contrast (3%) sinusoidal gratings. The thresholds were very low, even for such low-contrast gratings. These results suggest that the low-spatial-frequency channels are not involved in detecting the modulation frequency of the contrast-modulated grating. Rather, the local contrast seems to be the determinant of the detection of the contrast-modulated grating itself.