Repetition blindness in a saccadic persistence of vision display.

Abstract

A form of repetition blindness in visually unimpaired individuals was found for objects presented during saccades. Observers were asked to draw their percepts after making saccades across an LED strip that "painted" an image on their retinas by presenting sequential columns of a bitmap at a speed to match a 30-degree saccade. During experimental trials, repetitions of a single letter (either "A," "X," "H," or "V") were presented across saccades. Although an average of six letters were presented across each saccade, observers typically indicated perceiving only a single instance of the letter in their drawings. This inability to perceive multiple instances of a letter was not due to a limited region of attentional processing, as it only attained for multiple instances along the axis of the saccade-horizontal saccades did not affect perception of multiple letters along the vertical axis. This effect is likely due to selective suppression of visual areas during saccades.