Optimal trans-saccadic integration relies on visual working memory

Stewart, Emma E.M.; Schütz, Alexander C.

doi:10.1016/j.visres.2018.10.002

Cited by 24 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 77 publications

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“…Specifically, the authors proposed that transsaccadic integration can be driven by a remapped, preattentive, and maskable memory as well as by WM that is capacity limited, attention demanding, and nonmaskable. In accordance with that proposition, recent studies showed that transsacadic integration can be modulated by attention (Stewart & Schütz, 2018a) and be impaired by additional WM load (Stewart & Schütz, 2018b). Nevertheless, because WM is capacity limited, transsaccadic integration cannot rely solely on WM.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Spatiotopic and saccade-specific transsaccadic memory for object detail

et al. 2020

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The content and nature of transsaccadic memory are still a matter of debate. Brief postsaccadic target blanking was demonstrated to recover transsaccadic memory and defeat saccadic suppression of displacement. We examined whether blanking would also support transsaccadic transfer of detailed form information. Observers saccaded to a peripheral, checkerboard-like stimulus and reported whether an intrasaccadic change had occurred in its upper or lower half. On half of the trials, the stimulus was blanked for 200 ms with saccade onset. In a fixation condition, observers kept fixation but the stimulus was displaced from periphery to fixation, mimicking the retinal events of the saccade condition. Results show that stimulus blanking improves transsaccadic change detection, with performance being far superior to the retinally equivalent fixation condition. Our findings argue in favor of a remapped memory trace that can be accessed only in the blanking condition, when not being overwritten by the salient postsaccadic stimulus.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 65%

Spatiotopic and saccade-specific transsaccadic memory for object detail

et al. 2020

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“…As has been previously argued (Stewart & Schütz, 2018b;Stewart & Schütz, 2019b) it seems likely that integration is a specific mechanism that may occur only at attended, task relevant locations, where integration would be important to help alleviate the differences between the attended peripheral and foveal percepts. While peripheral information may be encoded for all other locations, the subsequent processing of this information may be limited due to inattentional blindness (Simons, 2000), or decision complexity limitations (Rosenholtz, 2020), so that there is no awareness of discrepancies in the pre-and postsaccadic percepts at these task-irrelevant locations.…”

Section: Integration's Limits: Causal Inference and Perceptual Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Transsaccadic integration is often promoted as being a useful mechanism for maintaining perceptual stability across saccades: this may, prima facie, seem like an obvious connection, however, it has been recently questioned how much of a role transsaccadic integration may actually play in our percept of a stable world (Stewart & Schütz, 2018b;Stewart & Schütz, 2019b). While there seems to be an obvious benefit from the integration of peripheral and foveal information across saccades, the role of integration in perceptual stability may be more nuanced than providing a simple perceptual benefit or averaging, and there may be limitations on where, and when, integration occurs.…”

Section: Integration's Limits: Causal Inference and Perceptual Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second limitation of integration, however, questions the extent to which integration may actually be a useful mechanism for perceptual stability. This becomes evident when considering the aforementioned findings, that optimal transsaccadic integration can be destroyed by the presentation of a single attentional distractor, or by a single item held in VWM (Stewart & Schütz, 2018a;Stewart & Schütz, 2018b). If integration cannot occur with any additional attention or memory load, then how can it be a useful mechanism to maintain perceptual stability in a visual world cluttered with items that demand attention and memory resources?…”

Section: Integration's Limits: Causal Inference and Perceptual Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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A review of interactions between peripheral and foveal vision

2020

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Visual processing varies dramatically across the visual field. These differences start in the retina and continue all the way to the visual cortex. Despite these differences in processing, the perceptual experience of humans is remarkably stable and continuous across the visual field. Research in the last decade has shown that processing in peripheral and foveal vision is not independent, but is more directly connected than previously thought. We address three core questions on how peripheral and foveal vision interact, and review recent findings on potentially related phenomena that could provide answers to these questions. First, how is the processing of peripheral and foveal signals related during fixation? Peripheral signals seem to be processed in foveal retinotopic areas to facilitate peripheral object recognition, and foveal information seems to be extrapolated toward the periphery to generate a homogeneous representation of the environment. Second, how are peripheral and foveal signals re-calibrated? Transsaccadic changes in object features lead to a reduction in the discrepancy between peripheral and foveal appearance. Third, how is peripheral and foveal information stitched together across saccades? Peripheral and foveal signals are integrated across saccadic eye movements to average percepts and to reduce uncertainty. Together, these findings illustrate that peripheral and foveal processing are closely connected, mastering the compromise between a large peripheral visual field and high resolution at the fovea. Brief overview of differences between peripheral and foveal vision Although the human eye is often compared to a photographic camera, processing across the visual field is not homogeneous like in a camera film or a digital sensor. First, there are gaps in sensory information due to several anatomical properties of the eye: (a) there are no photoreceptors in the optic disc, where the axons of the retinal ganglion cells exit the eyeball: this leads to a blind spot (Mariotte, 1740, cited after Ferree & Rand, 1912; Grzybowski & Aydin, 2007). (b) The center of the retina contains only cone, but no rod photoreceptors (Schultze, 1866; Oesterberg, 1935; Curcio, Sloan, Kalina, & Hendrickson, 1990), leading to a central scotoma under dark illumination conditions. (c) Because photoreceptors are located on the back side of the retina, away from the light, blood vessels cast shadows on them (Purkinje, 1819; von Helmholtz, 1867; Evans, 1927; Adams & Horton, 2002). The second striking difference to a photographic camera is that the processing of visual signals varies quite dramatically across the visual field. Here, an important distinction arises between the center of the visual field, called the fovea, and the rest, called the periphery. 1 We only briefly highlight some of the key differences in processing and perception between the fovea and the periphery because these have been reviewed in detail elsewhere

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“…However, given the known role of visual attention in transsaccadic perception (e.g., Stewart & Schütz, 2018a ), we think our findings reflect modulations of hue perception by a change in the locus of presaccadic attention. Due to the presaccadic shift of attention, the presaccadically acquired information can be temporarily stored in visual working memory, allowing for quick transsaccadic integration after the saccade ( Schut, Van der Stoep, Postma, & Van der Stigchel, 2017 ; Steward & Schütz, 2018b ). When this presaccadic shift of attention shifts with the adapted oculomotor program, the influence of the presaccadic color is decreased.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transsaccadic perception is affected by saccade landing point deviations after saccadic adaptation

et al. 2020

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Whenever we move our eyes, some visual information obtained before a saccade is combined with the visual information obtained after a saccade. Interestingly, saccades rarely land exactly on the saccade target, which may pose a problem for transsaccadic perception as it could affect the quality of postsaccadic input. Recently, however, we showed that transsaccadic feature integration is actually unaffected by deviations of saccade landing points. Possibly, transsaccadic integration remains unaffected because the presaccadic shift of attention follows the intended saccade target and not the actual saccade landing point during regular saccades. Here, we investigated whether saccade landing point errors can in fact alter transsaccadic perception when the presaccadic shift of attention follows the saccade landing point deviation. Given that saccadic adaptation not only changes the saccade vector, but also the presaccadic shift of attention, we combined a feature report paradigm with saccadic adaptation. Observers reported the color of the saccade target, which occasionally changed slightly during a saccade to the target. This task was performed before and after saccadic adaptation. The results showed that, after adaptation, presaccadic color information became less precise and transsaccadic perception had a stronger reliance on the postsaccadic color estimate. Therefore, although previous studies have shown that transsaccadic perception is generally unaffected by saccade landing point deviations, our results reveal that this cannot be considered a general property of the visual system. When presaccadic shifts of attention follow altered saccade landing points, transsaccadic perception is affected, suggesting that transsaccadic feature perception might be dependent on visual spatial attention.

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Optimal trans-saccadic integration relies on visual working memory

Cited by 24 publications

References 77 publications

Spatiotopic and saccade-specific transsaccadic memory for object detail

Spatiotopic and saccade-specific transsaccadic memory for object detail

A review of interactions between peripheral and foveal vision

Transsaccadic perception is affected by saccade landing point deviations after saccadic adaptation

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