Transsaccadic perception of changes in object regularity

Abstract

The visual system compensates for differences between peripheral and foveal vision using different mechanisms. Although peripheral vision is characterized by higher spatial uncertainty and lower resolution than foveal vision, observers reported objects to be less distorted and less blurry in the periphery than the fovea in a visual matching task during fixation (Valsecchi et al., 2018). Here, we asked whether a similar overcompensation could be found across saccadic eye movements and whether it would bias the detection of transsaccadic changes in object regularity. The blur and distortion levels of simple geometric shapes were manipulated in the Eidolons algorithm (Koenderink et al., 2017). In an appearance discrimination task, participants had to judge the appearance of blur (experiment 1) and distortion (experiment 2) separately before and after a saccade. Objects appeared less blurry before a saccade (in the periphery) than after a saccade (in the fovea). No differences were found in the appearance of distortion. In a change discrimination task, participants had to judge if blur (experiment 1) and distortion (experiment 2) either increased or decreased during a saccade. Overall, they showed a tendency to report an increase in both blur and distortion across saccades. The precision of the responses was improved by a 200-ms postsaccadic blank. Results from the change discrimination task of both experiments suggest that a transsaccadic decrease in regularity is more visible, compared to an increase in regularity. In line with the previous study that reported a peripheral overcompensation in the visual matching task, we found a similar mechanism, exhibiting a phenomenological sharpening of blurry edges before a saccade. These results generalize peripheral–foveal differences observed during fixation to the here tested dynamic, transsaccadic conditions where they contribute to biases in transsaccadic change detection.