The problem of rationalizing motion perception, as in other domains of vision, is the inevitable ambiguity of images, in this case the ambiguity of any sequence of images projected onto the central retina. The observer must respond appropriately to the stimulus, but the sequence of retinal images does not allow a definite determination of the physical movement of the source. Vision scientists and others have long struggled to explain how this uncertainty might be resolved. At the same time, psychologists have sought to explain perceptual anomalies in perceived motion, much effort having been devoted to anomalies of speed apparent in the flash-lag effect and the anomalies of perceived direction elicited by viewing moving objects through apertures. Neither approach has been particularly successful in rationalizing these phenomena. A more radical approach is the idea that motion percepts are fully determined by past experience with frequency of projections associated with moving objects in the 3-D by virtue of the relative success of subsequent behavior. As a result, the perceived speed and direction of object motion should coincide with the image speed and direction generated by the source associated most consistently with any given image sequence in the past. The fact that many motion percepts can be accounted for in this way supports the conclusion that the visual system is indeed using a wholly empirical strategy to generate essentially reflexive perceptions of moving objects. As in the parallel explanations of lightness/brightness, color, form and depth, the relationship between projection frequency and the unknowable sources to which behavior must be directed is presumably instantiated in visual system circuitry through behavioral feedback during evolution.

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