Abstract
Visual persistence has been shown to increase with the spatial frequency of sinusoidal and square-wave gratings. It has also been found to decrease with increasing contrast. If persistence is determined by visibility alone, then a square-wave grating containing greater power would be expected to give rise to less persistence than would a sinusoidal grating of the same fundamental spatial frequency. In the present experiment, measures of visual persistence were obtained with gratings composed of sinusoids, square waves, and square waves with the fundamental removed. Fundamental spatial frequency was varied from 0.5 to 4.5 cpd in 1-cpd steps. Visual persistence was found to increase only with the missing fundamental waveform. This suggests that visual persistence is determined by the lowest actual sinusoidal component of complex stimuli. Additional power contained in the higher harmonics of square-wave gratings does not serve to reduce persistence.
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May, J.G., Ritter, A.B. What determines the visual persistence of complex stimuli?. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 28, 27–29 (1990). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337639
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337639