Influence of Small Eye Movement on Perceptual Filling-in Time

When a small area that has a different texture from its surroundings is presented to a subject´s peripheral vision, that person perceives that the area is filled by its surrounding texture. It disappears within a few seconds under certain circumstances. This illusion is called filling-in. The filling-in time depends on textural properties, the area´s size, the eccentricity with which the small area is projected, and so on. Filling-in characteristics must be elucidated to understand the mode of information processing in human vision because filling-in has been considered to contribute greatly to capturing external visual information. Facilitation of filling-in is generally evaluated using the filling-in time. Furthermore, it is well-known that we can see nothing by restraining eye movement artificially. Eye movement is important to acquire visual information. Therefore, we can suppose that facilitation of filling-in is influenced by eye movement. Although it has been recently indicated that eye movement influences the filling-in time while measuring time to filling-in, the relationship between eye movement and the filling-in time has rarely been reported. In this study, we measured the filling-in time, with simultaneous recording of eye movement. Results showed that the filling-in time correlates moderately or weakly with eye movement, under the condition that complete fixation is achieved.