Abstract
Saccades pose several problems for visual perception, including how to keep track of objects and how to combine information about object features across glances. In addition, the visual system must take account of the delay after each saccade before new retinal input reaches awareness. We studied the mechanisms underlying visual stability by examining the transfer of tilt adaptation across saccades. Participants viewed a tilted adaptor and then were cued to make a saccade to a new location. The timing of the test stimulus was varied so that it was presented either before or after the saccade, with the test presented either near to fixation or the saccadic target. There was a gradual shift in the tilt after-effect (TAE) from the current fixation to the future gaze position before the saccade. In a second experiment, we placed adapters at the current fixation and at other potential target locations. This allowed a comparison of the relative weighting of information from the fovea and from the periphery in the perceived TAE. Overall, the results suggest that the visual system uses a combination of pre- and post-saccadic re-mapping of visual features to maintain visual stability across saccades.