Stronger saccadic suppression of displacement and blanking effect in children

Abstract

Humans do not notice small displacements to objects that occur during saccades, termed saccadic suppression of displacement (SSD), and this effect is reduced when a blank is introduced between the pre-and postsaccadic stimulus (Bridgeman, Hendry, & Stark, 1975; Deubel, Schneider, & Bridgeman, 1996). While these effects have been studied extensively in adults, it is unclear how these phenomena are characterized in children. A potentially related mechanism, saccadic suppression of contrast sensitivity-a prerequisite to achieve a stable percept-is stronger for children (Bruno, Brambati, Perani, & Morrone, 2006). However, the evidence for how transsaccadic stimulus displacements may be suppressed or integrated is mixed. While they can integrate basic visual feature information from an early age, they cannot integrate multisensory information (Gori, Viva, Sandini, & Burr, 2008; Nardini, Jones, Bedford, & Braddick, 2008), suggesting a failure in the ability to integrate more complex sensory information. We tested children 7 to 12 years old and adults 19 to 23 years old on their ability to perceive intrasaccadic stimulus displacements, with and without a postsaccadic blank. Results showed that children had stronger SSD than adults and a larger blanking effect. Children also had larger undershoots and more variability in their initial saccade endpoints, indicating greater intrinsic uncertainty, and they were faster in executing corrective saccades to account for these errors. Together, these results suggest that children may have a greater internal expectation or prediction of saccade error than adults; thus, the stronger SSD in children may be due to higher intrinsic uncertainty in target localization or saccade execution.

A bias in saccadic suppression of shape change

“…Such accounts fail to offer a potential explanation for our shape-change direction bias, and a row of other findings on transsaccadic change perception. For example, the improvement of displacement detection due to accompanying object-form changes ( Demeyer et al, 2010 ) or other accompanying feature changes ( Tas et al, 2012 ), or a stronger blanking effect for children compared to adults ( Stewart, Hübner, & Schütz, 2020 ). Overall, an account based on evidence evaluation for or against a stable transsaccadic percept appears to be the more comprehensive theory for visual stability across saccades and, with consideration of feature-specific transsaccadic expectations, the most likely theory behind our findings.…”

“…An accumulation of agreements with transsaccadic expectations for every feature may outweigh contradictions with transsaccadic expectations on spatial position such as large displacements or even blanks. This may become apparent in intrasaccadic displacement studies that found higher detection thresholds for naturalistic stimuli ( McConkie & Currie, 1996 ); or a smaller blanking effect with complex stimuli ( Tas et al, 2012 ; Stewart, Hübner, & Schütz, 2020 ).…”

“…Finally, the influence of transsaccadic expectations may be manifold and become apparent not solely in conscious categorisation but also in reaction time ( Huber-Huber et al, 2019 ; Stewart, Hübner, & Schütz, 2020 ; Huber-Huber & Melcher, 2021 ) or, potentially, fixation duration (e.g. Henderson & Hollingworth, 2003 ), and pupil dilation ( Preuschoff et al, 2011 ).…”

“…Another line of research suggests that differences across the visual field are accounted for by the means of transsaccadic learning and transsaccadic predictions. Specifically, it has been shown that presaccadic stimuli appear more alike to a consistently accompanying postsaccadic stimulus after a relatively brief learning phase (e.g., Cox et al, 2005 ; Herwig & Schneider, 2014 ; Valsecchi & Gegenfurtner, 2016 ; for a review see Stewart, Valsecchi, & Schütz, 2020 ). Consistent with predictive coding theory (e.g., Rao & Ballard, 1999 ; Friston, 2009 ; for a review see de Lange et al, 2018 ), it has been suggested that a visual signal ( Edwards et al, 2017 ), based on the recent transsaccadic experience, is generated upon processing of the presaccadic input and integrated with it leading to the biased appearance of the presaccadic stimulus.…”

Oculomotor corollary discharge signaling is related to repetitive behavior in children with autism spectrum disorder

“…This finding is consistent with the interpretation of a greater reliance on the saccade landing site to localize the post-saccadic target. There is at least some evidence showing that children make less precise saccades than adults do, and therefore may have stronger expectations of greater intrinsic noise in the visuomotor system than adults ( Stewart et al, 2020 ). However, more studies directly manipulating spatial uncertainty using experiments and/or computational modeling (e.g., Atsma, Maij, Koppen, Irwin, & Medendorp, 2016 ; Niemeier, Crawford, & Tweed, 2003 ) are needed to tease apart the relative contributions of a strong prior of target not moving versus a strong expectation of greater intrinsic noise.…”