Abstract
Saccadic adaptation is the process by which the visual system adjusts saccadic amplitude when faced with consistent landing errors by displaced saccade targets. The present study investigated the perceptual consequences of saccadic adaptation. Previous work showed that saccadic adaptation not only changes the saccade landing position but also modifies the presaccadic covert shift of attention (Doré-Mazars & Collins, 2005; Collins & Doré-Mazars, 2006). Specifically, after adaptation covert attention shifts to the adapted spatial location, rather than the presaccadic target location. Recently, Van der Stigchel et al. (2020) showed that information at the adapted location may change perception of the presaccadic target. Here, we manipulated the color at the adapted location to determine how adaptation alters perception of the presaccadic feature value. In the pre-adaptation block, we presented two colored disks (5dva and 10dva from fixation) that were 30° apart in color space. The task was to execute a saccade to the far (10dva) disk and report its color. The stimuli disappeared during the saccade. In the adaptation block, participants were instructed to execute a saccade to a colored disk which was presented at an eccentricity of 10dva and displaced by 5dva backwards during the saccade. After adaptation, participants completed a mixed block adaptation and color report trials alternated. If presaccadic attention is shifted to the adapted rather than the presaccadic location, then we expected color reports for the presaccadic location (far target at 10dva) to be significantly affected by the color of the disk at the adapted location (5dva). We found that participants were more likely to report the color at the adapted location and their color reports were significantly more variable after adaptation compared to pre-adaptation. These results suggest that visual information at the adapted location influences the perception of the saccade target.