In his research on saccades, John Grimes revealed that subjects missed large scene changes during rapid point-to-point eye movement. His hypothesis—that our brains fill in those visuals gaps—has major implications for perception and consciousness. But while scientists have made great progress in studying change blindness, they have not replicated his work.

Conducted by Francis Fallon, Alan Lee, Brian Odegaard, Andrew Haun, and David Rosenthal, this project aims to replicate the John Grimes experiment, expand upon it, and advance the field of consciousness studies. The team’s experiments will tease apart and test various responses to trans-saccadic scene change. They will run six different, but related, multi-step experiments that measure performance levels, confidence-accuracy relationships, and subjective reports.

Researchers will test both low-level perception (luminance, contrast, orientation, placement) and high-level perception (color, object identity, and changes that are incongruent or semantic). Generating, presenting, and publishing such information could refine existing theories of consciousness.