Dependence of visual suppression on the angular size of voluntary saccadic eye movements.

Abstract Voluntary saccades of 17°, 15°, 13°, 11° and 8.30 min arc were made and a 20 msec stimulus presented as the saccade began. The percentage of trials in which the subject reported that he had seen the stimulus was taken as a measure for the vision suppression. A linear dependence between the size of the saccade and the percentage has been observed. The larger the saccade the smaller the percentage of stimuli perceived. This linear dependence gives clear evidence that the simple “smearing” of the retinal image can not be the only cause for the decrease in vision during a voluntary saccade.