Visual mislocalization produced by a rapid image displacement on the retina: examination by means of dichoptic presentation of a target and its background scene.

The time course of visual mislocalization produced by a rapid retinal image displacement was examined in moving-background and saccadic eye movement experiments. In both experiments, the target for localization task and its background scene were dichoptically presented: they were presented separately to the different eyes. The error curves of mislocalization shown in the dichoptic viewing condition were the same as those in monocular viewing (in the moving-background experiment) and binocular viewing conditions (in the saccadic eye movement experiment), indicating that in both experiments the neural interaction responsible for generating mislocalization took place at a site after the lateral geniculate nucleus in the visual system, not at the retinal level. Two possible explanations for mislocalization, one neurophysiological and the other cognitive, were proposed. Furthermore, it was established that the error curves of mislocalization are substantially different between the moving-background and the saccadic eye movement experiments: in the saccadic eye movement experiment, the error curves changed with the actual target position, but not in the moving-background experiment. This was interpreted as showing that the basic mechanism for mislocalization is not the same between the two experimental situations.