Saccadic suppression of motion of the entire visual field

During visual exploration of a natural scene, saccades must be used to direct the fovea to areas of interest in the scene. During these saccades, images of objects will be streaming across the retina at hundreds of degrees per second. Despite this disjoint motion of the retina, the world does not appear disjoint or unstable, and motion blur during saccades is not apparent. Sensitivity to many visual stimuli is known to be reduced during a change in fixation compared to when the eye is still. For example, motion of a small object is harder to detect during a saccade than during a fixation. We asked whether this saccadic suppression generalises to suppression of motion of the entire visual scene. Eye movements were measured with a video-based eye tracker. Saccade-contingent translations of 0.4, 0.8, or 1.2 deg were imposed on wide-field-of-view images of natural scenes. The changes were seldom noticed during saccades and detection rate for the smallest translation was just 6.25%. Qualitatively, even when trans-saccadic scene changes were detectable, they were less disturbing than equivalent changes in the absence of a saccade