The effects of drift and displacement motion on Dynamic Visual Acuity

Dynamic Visual Acuity (DVA) can be measured from two types of equivalently considered movement referred to as drifting-motion and displacement-motion. Displacement motion can be best described as the horizontal displacement of a stimulus, thus implying pursuit eye movements, and involves moving the stimulus from the fixation point of gaze towards the periphery. The drifting motion of a Gabor patch, for example, avoids pursuit eye movements, since the gaze is fixed in a point of the patch. Our data shows that in both types of movement visual acuity (VA), expressed in terms of spatial frequency, diminished as the velocity of the target increased. However, the slope of the regression equation indicated that this impairment is more than two-fold in the case of drifting-motion when compared to displacement motion. As the greater impairment took place when pursuit eye movements did not exist, our data suggests that these two types of motions correct differently for retinal slip. Retinal slip appears to be less efficiently compensated for in the case of drifting motion having adverse consequences on VA, while retinal slip has a higher tolerance in the case of displacement motion exhibited by the performance in VA.