Abstract
We easily keep track of an attended object across saccades, even if its projection on our retinas changes every time we move our eyes. This ability is thought to rely on a deployment of attention before the eyes start to move, sampling both the objects current and its "remapped" location (i.e. the retinal location the object will have after the saccade, Rolfs et al., 2011; Jonikaitis et al., 2013; Hunt & Cavanagh, 2011). Here we report evidence for this bi-local sampling by showing that an attended motion signal can be integrated pre-saccadically with another signal presented at its remapped location. While preparing a saccade, observers viewed four random dot kinematograms, one of which was cued by the onset of a colored flash. Observers reported the direction of coherent motion signal at the cued location presented simultaneously with a second signal either at the cues remapped location or at one of several control locations. Pre-saccadic discrimination of the cued motion signal increased only if we presented the second pulse at its remapped location and only if both signals shared the same direction. These results suggest that motion information is sampled and integrated from both the current and the post-saccadic retinal locations of an attended target even before the saccade begins. This is evidence of a mechanism that integrates features across different positions in space, provided they are expected to be from the same object.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2014