Testing the Perrone and Stone (1994) model of heading estimation

Human observers cannot judge heading accurately in the presence of simulated gaze rotations under many conditions Royden et al. (1994). Vision Research, 34, 3197-3214]. They make errors in the direction of rotation with magnitudes proportional to the rotation rate. Two hypotheses have been advanced to explain this phenomenon. The extra-retinal-signal hypothesis states that the observer's estimate of gaze rotation is always based on an extra-retinal signal such as an efference copy. In the absence of such a signal, the observer assumes that no rotation has taken place and responds accordingly. The retinal-image hypothesis states that visual input dominates when the extra-retinal signal is small or absent; under this hypothesis, errors with simulated rotations are the consequence of faulty visual mechanisms. Perrone and Stone (1994). Vision Research, 34, 2917-2938] proposed a model that purports to account for these errors using retinal-image information (optic flow) alone; its assumptions make it inefficient under some conditions. The most important of these assumptions is that the fixated target is stationary with respect to the world (the gaze-stabilization constraint). I compared the model's performance to human data from two experiments of Royden et al. (1994). Vision Research, 34, 3197-3214]. One experiment simulated translation while tracking a target attached to the scene (gaze-stabilized), while the other simulated translation while tracking a target that was not attached (gaze-unstabilized). The incorporation of the gaze-stabilization constraint leads to a predicted asymmetry for the errors in the gaze-unstabilized experiment that is not observed in human data. I conclude that the model as it stands is not consistent with human behavior. It is possible, however, that the predicted asymmetry is masked in human data by a counteracting asymmetry in a hypothetical processing stage subsequent to the heading estimation that extrapolates the observer's future path of self-motion.