Abstract
Saccadic eye movement affects perception of time. When a stimulus appears during a saccade, the perceived duration of that stimulus is compressed. However, these results were obtained using a static target, and the saccades were made to follow different stimuli appearing at different locations. It remains unknown whether eye movements following a moving target changes the perceived duration of that target. A moving object itself has been reported to induce time dilation. Therefore, following a moving target induces a conflicting situation: the stimulus motion may induce time dilation while saccade may induce compression. We examined whether time perception of a target stimulus is affected by saccadic eye movement following the target stimulus itself. We hypothesized that a stimulus followed by saccade would induce duration compression compared with a stimulus followed by smooth pursuit. Eight subjects were instructed to observe a stimulus displayed on a monitor and follow it with their eyes. In the pursuit condition, the stimulus moved smoothly and continuously. In the saccade condition, the stimulus jumped from one place to another. Stimulus motion in each condition was derived from the same pattern; thus, the same trajectory was used in the two conditions. The subjects then compared a moving stimulus to a static stimulus and answered which seemed to last longer. In both pursuit and saccade conditions, the stimuli were perceived to last longer than the static stimulus (p < 0.001). Furthermore, the amount of time dilation in the saccade condition (point of subjective equality [PSE] = 122% of the static stimulus) was larger than that in the pursuit condition (PSE = 113%, p = 0.006). In summary, even when objects move through the same trajectory, the duration differed depending on the eye movements. Saccade resulted in a longer perceived duration, contrary to our hypothesis.
Meeting abstract presented at VSS 2018