Saccadic Eye Movement Speed Can Explain the Large Variations in Phantom Array Effect Visibility

Abstract

Abstract The phantom array effect is one of the temporal light artefacts that can decrease performance and increase fatigue. The phantom array effect visibility shows large individual differences; however, the dominant factors that can explain these individual differences remain unclear. We investigated the relationship between saccadic eye movement speed and phantom array visibility at two different distances and four different directions of saccadic eye movement. The peak speed of saccadic eye movement and the phantom array effect visibility were measured at different modulation frequencies of the light source. Our results show that phantom array visibility increased as eye movement speed increased; the visibility of eye movement speed of a wide viewing distance was higher than that of a narrow one, and the peak speed of eye movement at a wide viewing distance was higher than that of a narrow one. Moreover, when clustered into subgroups according to individual eye movement speed, the mean speed of the saccadic eye movement of each subgroup can explain the variations in the visibility of the phantom array effect of the subgroup. Therefore, saccadic eye movement speed can affect the visibility of the phantom array effect.