Object features survive motion at saccadic speed but lose their link to specific objects
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Saccadic eye movements sweep objects across the retina at high speed, and this motion is routinely omitted from conscious perception. Whether object identity survives such motion is unclear. In two preregistered experiments (N = 20 and N = 19), we asked how object motion at saccadic speeds, while the eyes fixate, affects object continuity in the object-reviewing paradigm (Kahneman et al., 1992; Sasi et al., 2023). Two Gabor patches each carried a digit, then disappeared and reappeared in place, reappeared displaced, or travelled continuously to their new locations; the intervening interval lasted 300 ms or was matched to the mean or peak speed of a saccade. A target digit then appeared in one patch, and participants identified it. At the long duration, we replicated the Object-Specific Preview Benefit (OSPB): responses were faster when the target had been previewed in that same object than in the other one. At saccadic durations, the OSPB disappeared, and adding a distinguishing surface feature in Experiment 2 did not restore it. The general preview benefit, faster responses to any previewed digit than to a new one, persisted at every duration. Object features therefore survive motion at saccadic speed, but their link to a particular object does not.
Authors: Melis Ince, Carolin Hübner, Martin Rolfs
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225733829
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