It is known that the perceived direction of a directionally ambiguous test stimulus is influenced by the moving direction of a preceding priming stimulus. To examine the spatial property of motion priming, we manipulated the spatial distance between the priming and test stimuli. Subjects judged the perceived direction of 180-deg phaseshifted sine-wave gratings (test stimulus) displayed immediately after the offset of a priming stimulus. We found that a brief priming stimulus induced negative

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... ion priming when it was spatially distant from the test stimulus. We also found that positive motion priming was observed when both priming stimulus and test stimulus were presented at the peripheral retina. Negative motion priming was observed regardless of the position of the stimuli when the duration of the priming stimulus was longer. We conclude that the effect of spatial distance on the visual motion priming could be explained by the activation of a center-surround antagonistic motion detecting mechanism when a brief priming stimulus was used.