ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Hum. Neurosci.
Sec. Sensory Neuroscience
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2025.1553504
Contrast affects stimulus detection in natural scenes
Provisionally accepted
- Department of Psychology, University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
How can we predict if a brief stimulus will be detected or perceived when embedded in a dynamic natural scene, such as those we encounter in our daily lives? This is a complex problem, with several approaches to it. Here, we were interested in determining the minimum luminance contrast to the background scene required to achieve detection and shape perception. To investigate this, we used natural videos with briefly appearing natural events, varying in timing of appearance, shape, position, and contrast. We found that there is an interplay between the timing of the event, its position, and the contrast needed for detection. However, for correct shape perception, timing was not a relevant variable. A lower contrast was required for event detection than for correct shape perception. We conclude that contrast alone can affect stimulus detection, but other parameters might interact with it in this task.
Keywords: contrast, detection, Shape Perception, shape discrimination, timing, Position
Received: 30 Dec 2024; Accepted: 15 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lopes, Tavares and Mendonça. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Catarina Mendonça, Department of Psychology, University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.