Information from Sacramento State slides:
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/b/blairn/vision6_online.pdf
Looming: object expansion in your visual field
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Optic flow produces looming
o Optic flow provides information about direction and can be confusing
! Example of optic flow: sitting at a stoplight, panic, you’re rolling
backwards! Then, you realize, your car is not moving at all, but the
car in front of you has moved forward

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Deception in motion study (Dunker, 1929)
o 4 Different conditions
! One dot on empty background, moving so slowly no-one noticed
! Two dots on empty background, only one moving slowly,
participants could detect motion, but didn’t know which dot was
moving
! One dot inside a rectangle, providing context, participants
could detect movement of the dot
! One dot inside a rectangle, providing context, but rectangle
was moving, participants incorrectly reported that the dot was
moving

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Movement vision is a separate function from just “vision”
o If the middle/medial temporal lobe is damaged, a person will have
difficulty perceiving motion (even though they are able to see objects in
their environment)
! Can’t see liquids when pouring, don’t know when to stop
! Can’t see speaker’s mouth move when talking
! Difficulty crossing roads: car was far away until I started moving
through the intersection, then it was very close

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Human infants are sensitive to looming within a few months after birth (White,
1971; Yonas, 1977)
o Ball, W., and Tronick, E. (1971). Infant responses to impending
collision: Optical and real. Science, 171, 818–820.
! Looming stimuli have been shown to trigger stereotyped defensive
responsesin human infants.

Dellen, B. K. & Wessel, R. (2008). Visual Motion Detection. In L. Squire, et al. (Ed.).
The New Encyclopedia of Neuroscience (pp. 291-295). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
•

Special mechanisms involved in motion perception: “Postsynaptic neurons in
the thalamic nucleus rotundus are selective for the direction of motion of an
object as well as looming patterns”

 •

“Looming visual patterns are produced by a fast approaching object, and
must therefore be detected reliably and well in advance of the expected
collision in order to provide the animal with enough time to execute its
escape behavior.”

Schiff, W., Caviness, J. A., & Gibson, J. J. (1962). Persistent fear responses in
Rhesus monkeys to the optical stimulus of “looming.” Science, 136, 982-3.
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Demonstration of looming effect in a non-human animal
Designed an apparatus to provide the optical equivalent of an impending collision
Silhouette of a ball either magnified (looming) or receded in the visual field
Room was dimly illuminated, all attention on light behind the ball
6 out of 8 infants and 13 out of 15 adult monkeys withdrew abruptly (leaped
backwards, often hitting the back of their cage with force) or ducked in response
to the looming stimulus
o Animals that looked away just before the onset of the looming stimulus
engaged in a “ducking” motion
o When the stimulus receded, most animals (19/23) engaged in exploratory
bx ---no fear response

Schiff, W. (1965). Perception of impending collision: A study of visually directed
avoidant behavior. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 79(11), 1-26.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0093887
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It was found that most animals respond avoidantly and directionally to the
abstract visual stimulus property of accelerated magnification of a dark form in
the field of view, which specifies the approach of an object and impending
collision. Such behavior was found to be relatively independent of shape and
magnification rate (with some exceptions) and is apparently not a product of
associative learning in some species.

Regan, D., and Beverley, K.I. (1978). Looming detectors in the human visual
pathway. Vis. Res. 18, 415–421.
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Psychophysical results in adult participants have similarly suggested sensitivity to
looming at early stages of visual processing. Such findings indicate specialization
of the visual system to detect and react to such ‘looming’ stimuli, and have
contributed to the traditional view of looming as a purely optical cue to imminent
collision.

Regan, D. & Vincent, A. (1995) Visual processing of looming and time to contact
throughout the visual field. Vision Research, 35, 1845 – 1857.
• “We conclude that, in foveal vision, time to contact, rate of expansion and size
can be processed simultaneously, independently, and in parallel. Our main finding
was that this independence progressively decreased as eccentricity increased. For

 example, in peripheral, but not in foveal vision, variations in rate of
expansion produced illusory variations in time to contact.”
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Discussion: “In particular, if the direction of gaze roughly coincides with the
direction of self-motion through a three-dimensional world, the predominant
effects of self-locomotion are that retinal images of nearby objects in the central
visual field expand with comparatively little translational motion while retinal
images of nearby objects in peripheral vision predominately translate. The
looming reflex is a different story. As mentioned already, a looming stimulus
might appear anywhere in the visual field, and a looming stimulus in
peripheral vision might be the most threatening of all. Our finding that
discrimination threshold for dØ/dt 
   increases by only 1.5 – 3.1 times as
eccentricity is increased from 0 – 32 degrees is consistent with this finding.”

Information can be found at: (Marc Green has a book, 2008)
http://www.visualexpert.com/Resources/rearendcollision.html
Vagnoni, Eleonora et al. (2012). Threat modulates perception of looming visual
stimuli. Current Biology, 22(19), 826-827. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2012.07.053
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Semantic content of a looming visual stimulus affects perceived time-to-collision.
Time-to-collision is underestimated for threatening compared to non-threatening
stimuli. Further, the magnitude of this effect is correlated with self-reported fear.

Rosenblum et al. (2000). Effects of Performance Feedback and Feedback Withdrawl
on Auditory Looming Perception. Ecological Psychology, 12(4), 273-291.
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Performance feedback for auditory stimuli can enhance accuracy in detecting the
arrival time of an oncoming car and improvements may maintain.

Von Mu¨hlenen, A. & Lleras, A. (2007). No-Onset Looming Motion Guides Spatial
Attention. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance,
33(6), 1297–1310. Doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.33.6.1297
VERY GOOD ARTICLE!
• Six experiments demonstrating that looming motion plays a unique role in
guiding spatial attention. Looming motion, even under conditions when motion
information is irrelevant to the task and is not part of any task-defined attentional
sets, produces an attentional advantage unlike that of any other motion or that
created by sudden onsets.
von Gru ̈nau, M., & Dube ́, S. (1994). Visual search asymmetry for viewing
direction. Perception & Psychophysics, 56, 211–220.
Proposed that both units detecting looming motion and units detecting receding motion

 exist, but that the former should have higher sensitivity than the latter because of the
ecological factors constraining the two signals
Tanaka, K., & Saito, H. (1989). Analysis of motion of the visual field by direction,
expansion/contraction, and rotation cells clustered in the dor- sal part of the medial
superior temporal area of the macaque monkey. Journal of Neurophysiology, 62,
626–641.
Medial superior temporal area of the Macaque monkey has many directionally selective
cells, which respond either to straight parallel motion, to rotation, or to
expansion/contraction Most relevant to our results here, cells responding to expansion
were much more common than cells responding to contraction (76 vs. 11 cells).
Zeki, S. M. (1974). Functional organization of a visual area in the posterior bank of
the superior temporal sulcus of the rhesus monkey. Journal of Physiology, 236, 549–
573.
Monkey visual cortex has single neurons that are sensitive to changing size.
Jouen, F. (1990). Early visual-vestibular interactions and postural development. In
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Jouen, F., Lepecq, J-C., Gapenne, O., & Bertenthal, B. I. (2000). Optic flow
sensitivity in neonates. Infant Behavior & Development, 23 (3–4), 271–284.
The sensitivity of 3-day old infants to looming motion has been tested. Although, these
infants had obviously very little perceptual experience, they responded to the incoming
motion flow pattern by tilting their head backwards. The magnitude of their response was
measured by changes in the pressure their heads exerted onto supporting air pillows.
Impressively, the incremental head pressure was linearly related to the velocity of the
optic flow, thus demonstrating high levels of sensitivity to the looming motion stimulus
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43 Sources