Temporal order judgments are disrupted more by reflexive than by voluntary saccades

Abstract

Yabe Y, Goodale MA, Shigemasu H. Temporal order judgments are disrupted more by reflexive than by voluntary saccades. J Neurophysiol 111: 2103-2108, 2014. First published March 5, 2014 doi:10.1152/jn.00767.2013.-We do not always perceive the sequence of events as they actually unfold. For example, when two events occur before a rapid eye movement (saccade), the interval between them is often perceived as shorter than it really is and the order of those events can be sometimes reversed (Morrone MC, Ross J, Burr DC. Nat Neurosci 8: 950 -954, 2005). In the present article we show that these misperceptions of the temporal order of events critically depend on whether the saccade is reflexive or voluntary. In the first experiment, participants judged the temporal order of two visual stimuli that were presented one after the other just before a reflexive or voluntary saccadic eye movement. In the reflexive saccade condition, participants moved their eyes to a target that suddenly appeared. In the voluntary saccade condition, participants moved their eyes to a target that was present already. Similarly to the above-cited study, we found that the temporal order of events was often misjudged just before a reflexive saccade to a suddenly appearing target. However, when people made a voluntary saccade to a target that was already present, there was a significant reduction in the probability of misjudging the temporal order of the same events. In the second experiment, the reduction was seen in a memory-delay task. It is likely that the nature of the motor command and its origin determine how time is perceived during the moments preceding the motor act. temporal order judgment; saccade; memory-delay task; visual grasp reflex WHEN WE INTERACT WITH EXTERNAL EVENTS, we do not always correctly perceive the order in which they occur. Previous research by Morrone et al. (2005) has shown that when two events occur just before a rapid eye movement (saccade), the interval between those two events is perceived to be shorter than it really is and the order in which they are perceived to occur is reversed. In the temporal order judgment (TOJ) tasks that Morrone et al. used, a saccade target suddenly appeared 30°to the right at the same time as a fixation point disappeared. The participants were instructed to move their eyes when the target appeared. After a variable delay following the appearance of the target, a pair of horizontal bars was displayed briefly at the top and the bottom of the screen with random onset asynchrony. The participants misjudged which of the two bars was presented first when the two bars were presented just before saccades. In this article we show that the temporal order of events just before saccade is perceived differently depending on whether or not the saccade is reflexive. When a target suddenly appears in the periphery, we move our eyes reflexively (visual grasp reflex) (Hess et al. 1946). In experiment 1, we show that errors in TOJ were observed more frequently when the saccadic eye movements were reflex...

Multiple channels of visual time perception

“…Morrone et al [35••] investigated the perception of brief intervals marked by equiluminant bars in the proximity of an eye movement. Consistently with the idea that spatial references are fundamental for visual time perception, they found strong compression of time with intervals of 100 ms being compressed by about 50% [35••] and even a transient reversal of temporal order during saccadic preparation [34,35••,68]. These effects were specific for the visual modality as auditory intervals were not distorted.…”

Dissociating the neural correlates of tactile temporal order and simultaneity judgements

“…In the visual modality, the TOJ > SJ contrast may reveal FEF activity, suggesting that visual TOJ shares neural correlates with the control of eye movements. This hypothesis may be supported by psychophysical findings of interactions between visual TOJs and eye movements 55 56 .…”

Vision During Saccadic Eye Movements

“…3A) (Binda et al 2009). This may seem a small effect, but it is sufficient to produce the most dramatic alteration of the sense of time: an inversion of the perceived temporal sequence (Binda et al 2009, Kresevic et al 2016, Morrone et al 2005b, Yabe et al 2014, as exemplified in Fig. 3B.…”