Transsaccadic integration of bystander locations

The present study investigated whether and how the location of bystander objects is encoded, maintained, and integrated across an eye movement. Bystander objects are objects that remain unfixated directly before and after the saccade for which transsaccadic integration is being examined. Three experiments are reported that examine location coding of bystander objects relative to the future saccade target object, relative to the saccade source object, and relative to other bystander objects. Participants were presented with a random‐dot pattern and made a saccade from a central source to a designated saccade target. During this saccade the position of a single bystander was changed on half of the trials and participants had to detect the displacement. Postsaccadically the presence of the target, source, and other bystanders was manipulated. Results indicated that the location of bystander objects could be integrated across a saccade, and that this relied on configurational coding. Furthermore the present data provide evidence for the view that transsaccadic perception of spatial layout is not inevitably tied to the saccade target or the saccade source, that it makes use of objects and object configurations in a flexible manner that is partly governed by the task relevance of the various display items, and that it exploits the incidental configurational structure in the display's layout in order to increase its capacity limits.