Predictive Foveal Processing in Active Vision

Humans execute rapid saccadic eye movements to inspect objects of interest in high-acuity foveal vision. Even though each saccade entails a large-scale displacement of the retinal image, vision is continuous, and we easily keep track of the location and identity of relevant stimuli. Here, we highlight the contribution of predictive foveal processing to visual continuity. Specifically, we summarize evidence that foveal and even foveolar vision is nonuniform and modulated by attentional allocation. We then describe a set of psychophysical and neuroimaging studies demonstrating that defining features of the eye movement target are predicted in presaccadic foveal vision. We explore a parsimonious implementational mechanism and propose the contribution of foveal prediction to several seemingly unconnected phenomena that may be unified under a straightforward assumption: Peripheral saccade target features predictively alter feature tuning in high-acuity foveal vision, facilitating a smooth perceptual transition once the target shifts to the center of gaze.