ABSTRACT
Earlier we discussed the causes of saccadic suppression. Now we are going to consider its function. Specifically, I want to comment on the relation between suppression and the fact that the visual (perceived) direction of an object doesn't change when the location of its image on the retina changes as a result of a voluntary saccade. Al!hough there isn't much historical precedent for doing so, I'll refer to this latter phenomenon as the "constancy of visual direction." My purpose in so doing is to emphasize its formal similarity to such effects as color, size, and brightness constancy which also involve a more or less invariant relation between perception and the physical stimulus despite a change in the retinal stimulus.
