Yoshimoto, Sanae and Garcia, Jesel and Jiang, Fang and Wilkins, Arnold and Takeuchi, Tatsuto and Webster, Michael A (2017) 'Visual discomfort and flicker.' Vision Research, 138. pp. 18-28. ISSN 0042-6989

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Abstract

Flickering lights can be uncomfortable to look at and can induce seizures in observers with photosensitive epilepsy. However, the temporal characteristics contributing to these effects are not fully known. In the spatial domain, one identified source of visual discomfort is when images have Fourier amplitude spectra that deviate from the natural (∼1/frequency, 1/f) statistical characteristics of natural scenes, especially if they contain excess energy at the medium frequencies at which the visual system is most sensitive. We tested for analogous effects in the temporal domain, manipulating both the amplitude and phase spectra of the flicker. Participants judged the relative discomfort of temporal luminance variations in a pair of uniform 17° fields with different temporal modulations. In general, discomfort increased with deviations from natural amplitude spectra, particularly those with excess energy at medium frequencies or biased toward sharper spectra. These ratings of discomfort were also consistent with ratings of how natural the modulations appeared. However, the temporal discomfort judgments were also strongly affected by the phase spectra of the flicker, with fixed vs. random spectra producing very different responses. This was not due to the perceived regularity or predictability of the flicker, but could arise from a number of other potential factors. Our findings suggest that, like spatial patterns, visual discomfort in time-varying patterns depends in part on how similar they are to the amplitude spectra of temporal variations in the natural visual environment, but also point to the critical role of the phase spectrum in the perceived discomfort of flicker.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Visual discomfort; Flicker; Natural image statistics; Temporal frequency; Amplitude spectrum; Phase spectrum
Subjects:	R Medicine > RE Ophthalmology
Divisions:	Faculty of Science and Health > Psychology, Department of
Depositing User:	Jim Jamieson
Date Deposited:	21 Jul 2017 13:38
Last Modified:	21 Jul 2017 13:38
URI:	http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/20117

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