Our new preprint by Melis, Carolin and Martin, “Object features survive motion at saccadic speed but lose their link to specific objects”, is now on bioRxiv. Each saccade sweeps the image of objects across the retina at high speed, yet we rarely notice this motion. Melis asked whether an object keeps its identity through such fast motion.

In two preregistered experiments, participants kept their eyes still while two Gabor patches, each carrying a digit, disappeared and reappeared in place, reappeared at new locations, or moved continuously to them. When this interval lasted 300 ms, participants identified a target digit faster if it had been previewed in the same object (the object-specific preview benefit). When the interval matched the brief duration of a saccade, however, this benefit disappeared, even when the two objects differed in a surface feature. Any previewed digit still sped up responses at all durations. Thus, object features survive motion at saccadic speed, but their link to a particular object does not.

We welcome comments on the preprint!