Linking motion-induced blindness to perceptual filling-in

"Motion-induced blindness" & "perceptual filing-in" are two phenomena in which perceptually salient stimuli repeatedly disappear and reappear after prolonged viewing. Despite the many similarities between MIB & PFI, two differences suggest that they could be unrelated phenomena: (1) An area surrounded by background stimuli can be perceived to disappear completely in PFI but not in MIB & (2) high contrast stimuli are perceived to disappear less easily in PFI but, remarkably enough, more easily in MIB. In this article we show that the apparent differences between MIB & PFI disappear when eccentricity, contrast, & perceptual grouping are taken into account & that both are most likely caused by the same underlying mechanism