The effects of flankers on contrast detection and discrimination in binocular, monocular, and dichoptic presentations

We investigated how two co-aligned adjacent stimuli (flankers) influence threshold versus pedestal contrast (TvC) functions in binocular, monocular, and dichoptic presentations. Targets were presented to the two eyes or to only one eye. Pedestals and flankers were presented to the same eye to which the target was presented (binocular or monocular presentations) or to the other eye (dichoptic presentation). In the binocular presentation of targets and pedestals, the binocular flankers lowered thresholds at low pedestal contrasts. The monocular flankers had a similar effect to the binocular flanker, although the threshold reduction was smaller. In the dichoptic presentation of a target and a pedestal, flankers lowered thresholds when flankers were presented to the eye where targets were presented. In contrast, dichoptic flankers elevated thresholds at intermediate pedestal contrasts when a pedestal was also dichoptically presented. We fitted binocular contrast gain control models to the data. It follows from the fitting results that flankers modulate outputs from spatial filters in the monocular processing stage of contrast gain control.