Indicating the Singular Point in First-Order Optical Flow Fields

We investigated the accuracy with which subjects can indicate the singular point in a first-order optical flow field. This singular point might be important in navigation and orientation. The stimuli were expanding or rotating sparse random-dot patterns consisting of 80 dark dots on a light background. The stimulus window was circular with a diameter of 20 deg arc. The singular point could be at one of 48 different locations. Subjects had to indicate the location of this singular point with a cursor, while fixating in the centre of the stimulus. Presentation time was unlimited, though each dot had a limited lifetime (114 ms) to avoid density cues. Both veridicality and reproducibility for our subjects increased with increasing values of expansion or rotation in a nonlinear way. We did not find any systematic differences between expansion and rotation. When we blocked either the outer rim or the central part of the stimulus, performance remained the same for singular points that were within the visible part of the stimulus. For singular points outside this visible part, the reproducibility also remained the same, but subjects tended to locate the singular points closer to the rim of the visible part of the stimulus.