The Temporal Limits of Visual Information Acquisition
During a
saccade our visual system takes in very little information.
And in fact, this insensitivity occurs just before, during, and after a
saccade (most likely to avoid dealing with the smeared image that the
eye movement produces). Therefore, after your eyes have come to rest
(known as a fixation)how quickly does your brain begin to use
information from the new point of gaze? The results of our research
(McConkie and Loschky, 2002) suggest that perception begins taking in
information as quickly as 6 ms after the end of a saccade, giving a
psychological justification for measuring fixation durations from that
point in time. An interesting question is whether, as suggested by the
work of Paul van Diepen, information from the center of vision is used
earlier than peripheral information. These results together with those
of a follow-up study (Loschky & McConkie, in press) are consistent
with this idea, but do not bear directly on this issue.
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