Temporal recalibration to delayed visual consequences of saccades.

The accurate inference of causality between actions and their sensory outcomes requires determining their temporal relationship correctly despite variable delays within and across sensory modalities. Temporal recalibration-the perceptual realignment of actions with delayed sensory feedback-has been demonstrated across various sensorimotor domains. Here, we investigate whether this mechanism extends to saccadic eye movements and sensory events contingent on them. In three experiments, participants made horizontal saccades that triggered high-contrast flashes at varying delays. They then reported whether the flashes occurred during or after the saccade, allowing us to track perceived event timing. Exposure to consistent delays between saccade onset and the flash led to a shift in perceptual reports: flashes presented after saccade offset were more often judged as occurring during the movement. This recalibration effect was robust even when we manipulated relevant visual cues such as the presence of a structured background or the continuity of the saccade target. In a replay condition, we found a significant but much smaller recalibration effect between replayed saccades and flash, demonstrating the importance of action execution for visuomotor temporal recalibration. These findings highlight the visual system's remarkable adaptability to temporal delays between eye movements and their sensory consequences. A similar recalibration mechanism may support perceptual stability in natural vision by dynamically realigning saccades with their resulting visual input, even amid changing visual conditions.