Smooth Pursuit to a Movement Flow and Associated Perceptual Judgments

Smooth pursuit is typically regarded as foveal tracking of simple targets and is therefore usually examined with stimuli such as a small moving dot. In real world situations, however, it is rare to encounter such perceptually minimal stimuli. Can smooth pursuit follow a complex object, such as a movement flow that contains ambiguous local but unambiguous global pattern of motion? Does this type of eye tracking always correspond to the motion perception of the same complex moving target? Our results show that one can smoothly pursue a movement flow even when the detection of this driving signal requires significant integration of information across space and time. Additionally, the generation of smooth pursuit appears to require sensory signals slightly stronger than that for perceiving coherent motion.