Saccadic Suppression of Displacement of Visual Target and Background Field

Abstract

In spite of frequent rapid eye movements, our perceptual world is rather stable. Our visual system should integrate retinal information across saccades to make a wide and stable visual field. In order to clarify how retinal information is processed, we investigated the effect of saccadic suppression of displacement. We measured detection probability of displacement of the target of a saccade and that of a background field. The background was a picture of a natural scene which subtended 80 deg X 100 deg. The target was a picture of a bird. The target and the background moved independently during saccades. The results show that it was more difficult to detect displacement of the background than to detect that of the target, and that the direction of the background displacement affects the detection probability of the target displacement. Retinal information of a background field seems to be used as a stable frame to build an inner representation of the outer world. Location of the target may be described by a relative position to the background field.