Object speed perception during lateral visual self-motion

Judging object speed during observer self-motion requires disambiguating retinal stimulation from two sources: self-motion and object motion. According to the Flow Parsing hypothesis, observers estimate their own motion, then subtract the retinal corresponding motion from the total retinal stimulation and interpret the remaining stimulation as pertaining to object motion. Subtracting noisier self-motion information from retinal input should lead to a decrease in precision. Furthermore, when self-motion is only simulated visually, self-motion is likely to be underestimated, yielding an overestimation of target speed when target and observer move in opposite directions and an underestimation when they move in the same direction. We tested this hypothesis with a two-alternative forced-choice task in which participants judged which of two motions, presented in an immersive 3D environment, was faster. One motion interval contained a ball cloud whose speed was selected dynamically according to a PEST staircase, while the other contained one big target travelling laterally at a fixed speed. While viewing the big target, participants were either static or experienced visually simulated lateral self-motion in the same or opposite direction of the target. Participants were not significantly biased in either motion profile, and precision was only significantly lower when participants moved visually in the direction opposite to the target. We conclude that, when immersed in an ecologically valid 3D environment with rich self-motion cues, participants perceive an object’s speed accurately at a small precision cost, even when self-motion is simulated only visually.