Temporal correspondence in perceptual organization: Reciprocal interactions between temporal sensitivity and figure-ground segregation

How do visual representations account for time? Is it the case that they represent time by themselves possessing temporal properties (temporal mirroring) or by atemporal markers/tags (temporal tagging)? This question has been asked for the past 5 decades and more, in neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. To address this debate, we designed a study to test temporal correspondence. We tested whether a temporal property (flicker frequency) could influence figure-ground segregation, and in turn, reciprocally, whether a figure-ground segregation would alter a temporal property (here, temporal resolution). We manipulated flicker frequency of dots on either side of an ambiguous edge in Experiment 1 and asked participants to indicate the figural region. In Experiment 2, we measured temporal sensitivity using a temporal order judgment (TOJ) task in both figural and ground regions. We showed temporal correspondence by showing specifically that figure-ground segregation depends on flicker frequency differences between two regions in ambiguous displays, where slow-flickering regions are seen as figural (Experiment 1). Reciprocally, in Experiment 2, we showed that participants performed a temporal-order judgment task better when the task had to be performed on a region seen as background compared with the same region seen as a figure. We show how relatively slower flickering regions are seen as figural, and correspondingly, seeing a region as figural is associated with a poorer temporal resolution. Our results collectively allow us to demonstrate a tight temporal correspondence in figure-ground perception, which could be explained using the parvocellular and magnocellular pathways, the two major retino-geniculo-cortical pathways.