Eidolons: Novel stimuli for vision research

Abstract

Meanings and qualities are fundamental attributes of visual awareness. We propose eidolons as a tool for establishing equivalence classes of appearance along meaningful dimensions. The eidolon factory is an algorithm that generates stimuli in such a meaningful and transparent way. The algorithm allows us to focus on location, scale, and size of perceptually salient structures, proto-objects, and perhaps even semantics rather than global overall parameters, such as contrast and spatial frequency. The eidolon factory is based on models of the psychogenesis of visual awareness. It affects the image in terms of the disruption of image structure across space and spatial scales. This is a very general method with many potential applications. We illustrate a few instances. We present results for the example of tarachopic amblyopia, showing that scrambled vision is indeed an apt interpretation.