Temporal Aspects of Visual Perception and Cognition

Abstract

A highly dynamic process, visual perception of the world around us proceeds by sequentially scanning the environment. This is accomplished by rapid eye movements (saccades) that direct the eyes’ foveal center of vision from one fixated location in the visual field to the next. Abstracted from the visual environment into the confines of the laboratory, the dynamics of the entire process can be parsed into subprocesses by studying several temporal properties of visual perception. Most prominent among these are the timing of perisaccadic processes (pre-saccadic and saccadic suppression of vision, post-saccadic enhancement of vision, and perisaccadic time compression), visual latency, temporal integration, visible persistence, temporal resolution, and temporal aspects of the storage and transfer of perceptual information in and through various stages of sensory and cognitive processing. Research has shown that these properties of visual perception interact with the spatial properties of perceptual processing. Among these spatio-temporal interactions, the most frequently researched are those occurring in different types of visual search, visual masking, and visual motion. That said, vision researchers have investigated the temporal properties (interacting with their spatial counterparts) either (a) by presenting static stimuli, in isolation or in temporal sequence, to an observer’s visual field while the eyes are stationary; or (b) by presenting stimuli that move through an observer’s visual field. The results of these research strategies reveal underlying visual mechanisms that define the dynamic range of, and the limits imposed on the temporal efficiency of, visual perceptual processing.