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Task: Participants were asked to track 4 objects from a field of 8 objects. The target objects were cued by white outline frames. At the end of the motion period, all objects changed into white disks. Subjects had to click on the four target disks. After their response, the correctly clicked balls are highlighted in green. (In the demo here the target balls are highlighted in green after a pause). Subjects were not told that some of the trials would repeat in the experiment. When trials do repeat, they have different motion duration and hence started (Experiment 2) and ended (Experiments 1 & 2) with different spatial configurations.
The actual displays in the experiment subtended 21x21 degrees, several times bigger than what's shown in the movie. The motion speed shown in the movies is an approximation, not exact value, to the speed used in the experiment.
Experiment 1: Training. This is a training trial used in Experiment 1. This trials was shown 15 times (intermixed with other trials) in the training phase. Trial duration was 6 to 7.5s, so the ending configurations were different from one repetition to another. Click here to view training.mov(File size: about 200KB)
Experiment 1: Transfer phase - Old. This is an "old" trial tested in the transfer phase. It was the same as the training phase but the ending configuration was different. Click here to view old.mov
Experiment 1: Transfer phase - Switched. This is a "switched" trial tested in the transfer phase. It had the same motion information as the training (or old) trials, but the previously tracked targets were now designated as nontargets, and previously ignored distractors were now designated as targets. Click here to view Switched.mov
Experiment 1: Transfer phase - Mixed. This is a "mixed" trial tested in the transfer phase. It had the same motion information as the training (or old) trials, but two of the previously tracked targets and two of the previously ignored nontargets were now designated as targets; the rest were designated as nontargets. Click here to view mixed.mov
Experiment 1: Transfer phase - New. This is a "new" trial tested in the transfer phase. Click here to view new.mov
Experiment 1 results: Accuracy in the old condition was significantly higher than the other conditions, showing learning of the repeated displays. Accuracy in the switched condition was not different from the new condition, suggesting that (1) learning in the old condition was not merely driven by perceptual familiarity with the repeated trials, and (2) learning was modulated by selective attention. Accuracy in the mixed condition was not higher than the new condition, revealing no evidence for partial transfer. This may indicate that all target trajectories were learned in relation to one another (and hence lack of transfer when only some of the target trajectories were tracked).
Experiment 2: Training. This is a training trial used in Experiment 2. This trial was shown 20 times (intermixed with other trials) in the training phase. Trial duration was 6sec (out of 8sec of total possible duration), but started and ended at a randomly selected time point. The beginning and ending configurations were different from one repetition to another. Click here to view a training trial.
Experiment 2: Transfer phase - old. This is an "old" trial tested in the transfer phase. It was the same as the training phase but the beginning and ending configurations were different. Click here to view Exp2Old.mov
Experiment 2: Transfer phase - reversed. This is an old trial played backwards. It was the same as the training phase except that (1) the motion was played backwards and (2) the beginning and ending configurations were different. Click here to view Exp2Back.mov
Experiment 2: Transfer phase - new. his is a "new" trial tested in the transfer phase. Click here to view Exp2new.mov
Experiment 2 results: Learning transferred completely to the old trials played backwards. This suggests that learning in MOT is not specific to the trained temporal context.
Readers are encouraged to rate/comment on this article at PLoS ONE. For more information, contact Tal Makovski at tal.makovski@gmail.com.
