Differential detection of global luminance and contrast changes across saccades and flickers during active scene perception

How sensitive are viewers to changes in global image properties across saccades during active real-world scene perception? This question was investigated by globally increasing and/or decreasing luminance or contrast in photographs of real-world scenes across saccadic eye movements or during matched brief interruptions in a flicker paradigm. The results from two experiments demonstrated very poor sensitivity to global image changes in both the saccade-contingent and flicker paradigms, suggesting that the specific values of basic sensory properties do not contribute to the perception of stability across saccades during complex scene perception. In addition, overall sensitivity was significantly worse in the saccade-contingent change paradigm than the flicker paradigm, suggesting that the flicker paradigm is an imperfect simulation of transsaccadic vision. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.