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Saccades actively maintain perceptual continuity

Nature Neuroscience volume 7, pages 65–69 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

People make saccades—rapid eye movements to a new fixation—approximately three times per second. This would seemingly disrupt perceptual continuity, yet our brains construct a coherent, stable view of the world from these successive fixations. There is conflicting evidence regarding the effects of saccades on perceptual continuity: some studies report that they are disruptive, with little information carryover between saccades; others report that carryover is substantial. Here we show that saccades actively contribute to perceptual continuity in humans in two different ways. When bistable stimuli are presented intermittently, saccades executed during the blank interval shorten the duration of states of ambiguous figures, indicating that saccades can erase immediately past perceptual states. On the other hand, they prolong the McCollough effect, indicating that saccades strengthen learned contingencies. Our results indicate that saccades help, rather than hinder, perceptual continuity.

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Figure 1: Bistable stimuli used in experiment 1.
Figure 2: State durations for bistable stimuli.
Figure 3: Persistence of the McCollough effect.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council. We thank S. Della Sala for alerting us to a possible connection between saccades and memory, and S. McKee and P. Verghese for helpful comments on the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, 6009, Western Australia, Australia

    John Ross & Anna Ma-Wyatt

  2. The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, 2318 Fillmore Street, San Francisco, 94115, California, USA

    Anna Ma-Wyatt

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  1. John Ross
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Correspondence to Anna Ma-Wyatt.

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Ross, J., Ma-Wyatt, A. Saccades actively maintain perceptual continuity. Nat Neurosci 7, 65–69 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1163

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