VISUAL DISSOCIATION OF DIGITIZED PHOTOGRAPHS

Visual dissociation occurs when a visual marker from one display in a rapidly presented sequence (e.g., 9 item/sec) is perceived as having o ccurred in a temporally adjacent display. Three experiments that evalu ated the application of computer graphics technology to study this phe nomenon with digitized color photographs are reported. The primary con cern was that visible phosphor persistence might artificially increase the frequency of integration errors. In Experiment 1, visible phospho r persistence was assessed using a multiple-repetition shutter test to determine which stimulus conditions did not yield reportable persiste nce. On the basis of these results, visual dissociation performance wh en the same color photographs were presented using mechanical 16-mm pr ojection (as in previous research) and when they were presented on a c omputer monitor were compared in Experiments 2 and 3. The results supp orted computer application, in that computer presentation yielded the same pattern of errors and accuracy levels as did research using mecha nical projection.