Abstract
The most obvious reason for looking at an object that one is trying to intercept is that doing so maximizes the spatial resolution of judgments about the object's position. In order to intercept the object one needs to know its future position, for which an estimate of the target's motion is needed. Biases in motion perception will therefore lead to systematic errors. As motion perception is based on a combination of retinal and extra-retinal signals, eye movements may influence such biases. Here, we examine whether following the object with one's eyes makes interception less susceptible to biases in motion perception. We asked participants to tap on disks that moved across a large screen. Disks moved to the right at various constant velocities. There were solid disks and patterned ones. We biased motion perception by moving the pattern within the patterned disks. The pattern's motion either corresponded with a projection of how the pattern would move if the disks were rolling balls (so that the pattern within the disk moved up to twice as fast as the disk itself), or to how it would move if the disks were balls with backspin (so that the pattern moved more slowly than the disk). On each trial, the instruction was either to follow the disk with one's eyes or to fixate the position at which one will try to hit it. The different instructions, velocities and kinds of targets were randomly interleaved. When subjects fixated the interception point, moving the pattern within the disk caused large systematic errors. These errors almost disappeared when participants followed the disks with their eyes. Thus, following moving objects with one's eyes has the additional advantage of making one less sensitive to the imperfections of motion perception.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2016