The following is a summary of “What determines location specificity or generalization of transsaccadic learning?,” published in the January 2023 issue of Ophthalmology by Osterbrink, et al.
Transsaccadic connections are taken into account by humans when seeing peripheral objects. A presaccadic perceptual bias resulted from acquiring new modified transsaccadic connections, according to a number of studies. However, it was still being determined if the learning effect was restricted to one area or applied to new locations. For a study, researchers looked into the circumstances in which transsaccadic learning of location generalizes.
All trials had acquisition stages when objects’ sizes (Experiments 2 and 3) or spatial frequencies (Experiment 1) were transsaccadically altered. Participants in the test stages evaluated each peripheral object’s specific attribute. These could appear in the same area where the learning took place or in brand-new places.
The perceptual bias effect at the old learning sites was repeated in every trial. Even when learning took place at several locations (Experiment 1) or with the characteristic of size (Experiment 2) for which a transfer had previously been demonstrated, transsaccadic learning remained location specific in both studies. The learning effect could only be seen to spread to other places in Experiment 3. In this, learning was limited to one item and not spread across various things that needed to be distinguished.
As a result, it may be said that transsaccadic learning remained location-specific when particular associations were acquired for many items but allowed for generalization to other places when a transsaccadic connection was learned for a single object.
Reference: jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2785286
