USING MOTION-INDUCED BLINDNESS TO STUDY PERCEPTION

Abstract

The representational theory of perception states that perception arises from the brain, which represents the outside world. The enactive theory of perception states that perception arises from the interplay between the subject's body and the world. The subject constructs his own perception through sensorimotor actions. Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is a phenomenon of visual disappearance. When an observer focuses on a point against a moving background, the surrounding static dot disappears subjectively. The purpose of this study is to determine if the enactive or representational theory is true for visual perception. As such, this study is interested in how action can lead to changes in the rate of disappearance of MIB targets. A within-subject design was used. 110 participants were asked to report disappearances by pressing the left arrow key. In the second condition, the same participants were instructed to mentally count the number of disappearances. This study hypothesizes that there will be different rates of target disappearances in both conditions. Two-tailed paired samples t test showed that this difference is statistically significant. The physical action of pressing the arrow key biases perception of the target, causing the rate of subjective disappearance to be different.