If I saw it, it probably wasn't far from where I was looking.
People are most likely to see something if their gaze is directed at it. Thus if they saw something they may be biased towards believing that they had been looking at it. In order to examine whether this is so we asked participants where a target that jumped to a new position every 250 ms had been at a moment indicated by a flash or a tone. The jumping introduced uncertainty about where the target was at the indicated moment, giving room for biases to be expressed. Participants showed a clear preference to select positions that were nearer to where they were looking.
Brenner
Eli
E
Faculty of Human Movement Sciences, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. e.brenner@fbw.vu.nl
Mamassian
Pascal
P
Smeets
Jeroen B J
JB
D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004215:Distance Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005403:Fixation, Ocular / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D009039:Motion Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D009949:Orientation / Q000502:physiology*; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D012438:Saccades / Q000502:physiology; D013998:Time Perception / Q000502:physiology; D035501:Uncertainty