Michael Hucka (hucka at eecs.umich.edu) wrote:
: I've been trying to determine what is the minimum presentation time of a
: visual stimulus that will allow a human observer to extract *some*
: information. Of course, this is going to be very task- and
: experience-dependent, but for recognizing simple forms or making simple
: discriminations, what is generally accepted as being a valid lower limit on
: exposure time?
You might try reading research by Philip M. Merikle at the University of
Waterloo. He has been studying dissociations between conscious
perception of a stimulus and responses based on that stimulus
("unconscious perception"). He has found both no conscious perception
and responding at chance at aprox. 15msec, Conscious perception and
responding above chance at 300msec., and, most interestingly, no
conscious perception but responding above chance at aprox. 50-60msec.
You should be aware that there are no "magic numbers" in this area and
that there is a huge amount of variability in such finding both between
and within individuals (consider time of day effects, motivation,
attention, etc.).
