Processing Of Peripheral Information Research Articles

Is information acquisition during large saccades possible?

The functional visual field can be divided into stationary field, eye field, and head field. The processing efficiency of these fields differs: As one deals with a wider field, efficiency of performance decreases. Sanders (1963) explained these differences by a perceptual encoding theory, but they could as easily be due to information acquisition during eye shifts. This was investigated in an experiment in which a left signal and a right signal were presented covering a display angle of either 45 deg (eye field) or 100 deg (head field). The right signal was presented at variable time intervals after the left signal. In the eye field, the short inspection time of the right signal, as usually observed when it is presented simultaneously with the left signal, disappeared when the right signal was presented during or after the eye shift. In the head field, inspection time of the right signal was independent of its moment of presentation. These results suggest that also during large eye shifts, processing of peripheral information occurs only during eye fixations and not during eye movements.