Comparing retinotopic and spatiotopic face (gender) aftereffects

At the bottom of this page is a looping movie that allows you to test spatiotopic face aftereffects and compare them to retinotopic aftereffects and to aftereffects at neither retinotopic nor spatiotopic locations.

We have a published paper showing the absence of spatiotopic face aftereffects using very different paradigm.
Afraz, S.R., & Cavanagh, P. (2009). The gender-specific face aftereffect is based in retinotopic not spatiotopic coordinates across several natural image transformations. Journal of Vision, 9(10:4), 1-9. download pdf file

In the procedure used below here, the top adapting face is male and the bottom female. In the test display, all faces are the same and part way between male and female.There are 4 seconds of adaptation, followed by half second blank to allow eye movements then a 1/3 second test and another half second blank to allow you to get back to where you were.There are 7 fixation markers (numbered 1 through 7). By combining different adapt and test fixations you can examine the aftereffects at several different locations. For example. Fixate at 4 during adaptation then wherever you move next, the aftereffect you see at 4 is the spatiotopic aftereffect. If you move to 6, the retinotopic aftereffect is at 6 and the spatiotopic at 4. If you move to 5 the spatiotopic is at 4 and the aftereffect, if any at 6 is neither spatiotopic nor retinotopic but it has the same eccentricity as test 4 (the spatiotopic case). Try different combinations and see if you notice any effects, retinotopic, spatiotopic or general (transfer to sites tha tare neither spatiotopic or retinotopic).

Some instructions. The thin horizontal bars are fixation tracks during adaptation. Move your eyes left and right along these tracks to avoid afterimages.

The retinotopic afterimage is distracting so go through several cycles before you try a judgment. Real experiments jitter the adaptors to avoid this.

The aftereffects may be subtle so it may take several cycles before you are willing to go much beyond "maybe male" or "maybe female". Try to end up with a magnitude judgment that you can compare from one test location to the other.

If you build up adaptation at one location, say, 4, you can test many aftereffect locations with successive tests. However, if you want to switch adaptation locations, say, from 4 to 5, you need to take a break to let the first adaptation fade away.