Abstract
In the present review, we address the relationship between attention and visual stability. Even though with each eye, head and body movement the retinal image changes dramatically, we perceive the world as stable and are able to perform visually guided actions. However, visual stability is not as complete as introspection would lead us to believe. We attend to only a few items at a time and stability is maintained only for those items. There appear to be two distinct mechanisms underlying visual stability. The first is a passive mechanism: the visual system assumes the world to be stable, unless there is a clear discrepancy between the pre- and post-saccadic image of the region surrounding the saccade target. This is related to the pre-saccadic shift of attention, which allows for an accurate preview of the saccade target. The second is an active mechanism: information about attended objects is remapped within retinotopic maps to compensate for eye movements. The locus of attention itself, which is also characterized by localized retinotopic activity, is remapped as well. We conclude that visual attention is crucial in our perception of a stable world.
Highlights
In recent years, many researchers have emphasized that vision is an active process (e.g. [1,2])
receptive fields (RFs) of neurons in these later areas differ in many important respects, but here we focus on the distinction between retinotopy and spatiotopy
REMAPPING AND ATTENTION: BEHAVIOURAL FINDINGS The hypothesis that remapping of RFs underlies visual stability is originally based on neurophysiological findings
Summary
Many researchers have emphasized that vision is an active process (e.g. [1,2]). Because trans-saccadic integration was believed to occur pre-attentively (at an early stage of processing), it was predicted that people should be able to seamlessly integrate information across saccades It should not matter whether people make eye movements or not. A cue was presented and participants had to report which letter had been presented at the cued location This experiment revealed two important properties of TSM. Memory was best for objects near the saccade target The importance of this latter finding became apparent when later studies revealed that an eye movement is always preceded by a covert shift of attention [29,30], so that the saccade target receives an attentional benefit. TSM has a limited capacity and only information about attended stimuli is retained [31,32]
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