David Melcher

Center for Mind/Brain Studies,
University of Trento

We typically make several saccadic eye movements every second. Yet many real-world
cognitive tasks require our brains to combine visual information across separate glances. We
have suggested that trans-saccadic perception involves a combination of working memory,
shifts of attention and the remapping of object features across the saccade (Melcher & Colby,
"Trans-saccadic perception", Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2008). In this talk, I will review
some recent experiments investigating the relationship between attention, working memory and
saccade-related remapping. Our results suggest that the main role of visual attention is to
influence the individuation of salient objects in the scene, and that these salient objects are
then automatically remapped across saccades based on the motor command. Thus, the
influences of selective attention and saccadic remapping on trans-saccadic perception can be
dissociated.