Grey-out elimination: the roles of spatial waveform, frequency and phase.

The retinal events of a saccadic eye movement were simulated by presenting to the stationary eye a blank field of variable duration bracketed in time by vertical gratings of the same average space luminance. The blank represents the saccadic “grey-out” and the gratings represent the clear retinal images of each fixational pause. The blank field fails to be be perceived w-hen it is of short duration. This duration is dependent on the waveform and spatial frequency of the gratings and may be as long as 350 msec. The effect is termed “grev-out elimination” and could explain our failure to perceive the retinal smear produced by saccades.