Abstract
Briefly presented stimuli around the time of a saccade tend to be mislocalized towards the endpoint of the saccade, a phenomenon called perisaccadic compression. It has been suggested that compression might be affected by landmarks other than the saccade target. We examined whether this would also hold for items represented in visual memory. We asked five participants to localize a green bar briefly presented around the time of a 7 degree rightward saccade. One second before the initiation of the saccade, an object was presented for 100 ms in one of three possible locations on the screen to the right of the fixation cross at 4, 6, and 8 degrees. In half of the sessions, participants were instructed to memorize the location of the object and indicate it at the end of each trial after indicating the location of the green bar. In the other half of the sessions, participants were instructed to indicate only the location of the green bar. Other than the difference in the instruction, participants saw the same stimuli in both parts of the experiment. In a control experiment, the orange was not presented at all. There was no effect of memory on the overall amount of compression or on its time course. A small (0.5 deg) shift in the center of compression away from the memory item was observed in the condition when the memory item was in the far position relative to the saccade target. Our results show that items in visual memory have no or only a very limited effect on perisaccadic compression.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016