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Abstract

Under certain conditions, a salient visual pattern presented at or near the centre of gaze, which would normally be easily seen, can be rendered completely invisible for perception. Combining principles from existing demonstrations of visual suppression, we present here a novel visual stimulus in which the immediate disappearance of highly salient visual patterns can be induced by the presentation of a second, non-overlapping pattern. This effect, which we term generalised flash suppression (GFS), resembles the previously reported binocular-rivalry flash suppression (BRFS) in its dynamic properties, but differs in its spatial requirements. In the main condition, the target is a foveally presented patch or image, shown alone on a black background, and remains continuously visible. After 2000 ms, randomly distributed dots are flashed in the periphery, an event that often causes the immediate perceptual disappearance of the target. While disappearance is aided by dichoptic presentation, it is neither contingent upon interocular conflict, nor any direct spatial conflict at all. These properties, along with the all-or-none nature of target disappearance, closely resemble the recently described spontaneous target disappearance present in motion-induced blindness (MIB). We characterise several aspects of GFS, exploring its generality, the spatial and temporal requirements for suppression, the role of ocular configuration, and the specificity of adaptation.