Jeroen Smeets

Perception of space-time

My view on perception is that it is not the passive processing of sensory information to yield an internal representation. Perception is the active selection and processing of information about those attributes that are needed to perform a certain task. The consequence is that physically related attributes are independently processed, which may lead to inconsistencies. This is for instance evident in the effect of visual illusions on action, but also in conscious perception. For instance, when a subject is asked to judge the position of a moving target at the moment of an unpredictable flash, the position of that target is not already present in an internal representation. It has to be acquired actively, which takes time. The consequence if that when the flash occurs at the position of the moving target, the target is perceived at a further along its trajectory: the flash-lag effect (Brenner & Smeets, 2000a). Similar effects occur when flashes are presented during pursuit eyemovements or around the time of a saccade.

Publications on perception of space-time

• Smeets JBJ, Brenner E (1994) The difference between the perception of absolute and relative motion: a reaction time study. Vision Research 34:191-195. (reprint)
• Smeets JBJ, Brenner E (1994) Stability relative to what? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 17:277-278.
• Smeets JBJ, Brenner E Trèbuchet S, Mestre D (1996) Is judging time-to-contact based on "tau"? Perception 25:583-590.
• Brenner E, van Damme WJ, Smeets JBJ (1997) Holding an object one is looking at: kinestetic information on the object's distance does not improve visual judgements of its size. Perception & Psychophysics 59:1153-1159. (reprint)
• Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2000a) Motion extrapolation is not responsible for the flash-lag effect. Vision Research 40:1645-1648. (reprint)
• Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2000b) Comparing extra-retinal information about distance and direction. Vision Research, 40:1649-1651. (reprint)
• Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2001) We are better off without perfect perception. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 24:215.
• Brenner E, Smeets JBJ, Landy MS (2001) How vertical disparities assist judgements of distance. Vision Research,41:3455-3466. (reprint)
• Brenner E, Smeets JBJ, van den Berg AV (2001) Smooth eye movements and spatial localisation. Vision Research 41:2253-2259 (reprint)
• Smeets JBJ, Brenner E. (2001) The absence of representations causes inconsistencies in visual perception. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24:1006. (1-page reprint without references)
• Rotman GB, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2002) Spatial but not temporal cueing influences the mislocalisation of a target flashed during smooth pursuit. Perception, 31:1195-1203. (reprint)
• Rotman, GB, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2004) Quickly tapping targets that are flashed during smooth pursuit reveals perceptual mislocalizations. Experimental Brain Research 156:409-414 (reprint)
• Rotman GB, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ. (2005) Flashes are localised as if they were moving with the eyes. Vision Research, 45:355-364 (reprint)
• Brenner E, van Beers RJ, Rotman G, Smeets JBJ. (2006) The role of uncertainty in the systematic spatial mislocalisation of moving objects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 32:811-825 (reprint)
• Brouwer AM, López-Moliner J, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2006) Determining whether a ball will land behind or in front of you: Not just a combination of expansion and angular velocity. Vision Research 46:382-391 (reprint)
• López-Moliner J, Smeets JBJ, Brenner E. (2007) Effects of texture and shape on perceived time-to-passage: knowing ‘what’ influences judging ‘when’. Perception & Psychophysics 69:887–894 (reprint)
• Brenner E, Mamassian P, Smeets JBJ (2008) If I saw it, it probably wasn’t far from where I was looking. Journal of Vision8(2):7, 1-10 (reprint, JOV)
• Maij F, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2009) Temporal information can influence spatial localization. Journal of Neurophysiology 102:490-495 (reprint, (supplementary material)
• Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2010) How well can people judge when something happened? Vision Research 50:1101–1108 (reprint, DOI)
• Maij F, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2010) The use of the saccade target as a visual reference when localizing flashes during saccades. Journal of Vision, 10(4):7, 1–9 (reprint, JOV)
• Maij F, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2011) Temporal uncertainty separates flashes from their background during saccades. Journal of Neuoricience, 31:3708–3711 (reprint, DOI)

• Maij F, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2011) Peri-saccadic mislocalization is not influenced by the predictability of the saccade target location. Vision Research, 51:154-159 (reprint, DOI)

• Maij F, de Grave DDJ, Brenner E, Smeets JBJ (2011) Misjudging where you felt a light switch in a dark room. Experimental Brain Research, in press

My other areas of research are:

• Interception
• Prehension
• Illusions in perception and action.
• Variability and adaptation
• Eye movements
• Search
• Other aspects of motor control
• Color vision