Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Journal Club
  • Published:

Visual processing

Perceiving the probable present

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 2, page 5 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Open your eyes, and it may feel like you see instantly. However, it takes time for the brain to receive and interpret visual signals, meaning that perceptual awareness of the outside world can emerge only after a slight delay. This inherent delay in perception raises the question of how people function in dynamic environments where things move or change rapidly. When things move quickly (for example, at 50 km per h), even small delays (50 ms) in perceptual processing have the potential to cause considerable localization errors (~70 cm); unmitigated, these delays should leave people stuck in the perceptual past. Yet, remarkably, athletes can hit fast-moving balls, and hunters can take down running prey, despite having access only to outdated visual information.

In 1994, Romi Nijhawan argued that the brain uses predictive motion extrapolation to compensate for its own processing delays when localizing moving objects. In other words, information about how an object has been moving is used to infer its probable present position. Thus, people are able to see the object where it now (probably) is, rather than where it once was. To support this claim, Nijhawan described a striking visual phenomenon first reported decades earlier: when a stationary object is flashed next to a moving object, people report seeing the moving object positioned ahead of the flashed object even though the two objects are physically aligned. Nijhawan argued that this phenomenon, now known as the flash-lag effect, occurs because the brain extrapolates the perceived position of the (predictable) moving object forwards along its trajectory, while leaving the perceived position of the (unpredictable) stationary object unaltered.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

Original article

Related articles

  • Berry, M. J., Brivanlou, I. H., Jordan, T. A. & Meister, M. Anticipation of moving stimuli by the retina. Nature 398, 334–338 (1999)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hogendoorn, H. Motion extrapolation in visual processing: lessons from 25 years of flash-lag debate. J. Neurosci. 40, 5698–5705 (2020)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eagleman, D. M. & Sejnowski, T. J. Motion integration and postdiction in visual awareness. Science 287, 2036–2038 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Melbourne School of Psychological Science, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    William Turner

Authors
  1. William Turner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to William Turner.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Turner, W. Perceiving the probable present. Nat Rev Psychol 2, 5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00137-w

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-022-00137-w

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing