Fabian Schnier Institute of Psychology Fliednerstrasse 21, D-48149 Münster Phone: +49 (0) 251/83 34179 Fax.: +49 (0) 251/83 34173 E-mail: FabianSchnier@gmx.de E-mail: Fabian.Schnier@uni-muenster.de

PhD in 2011

Research Project

When peceiving a scene, we can only get pieces of it at any instant, i.e. during each period of fixation. The information, which is aquired during a particular period of fixation has to be integrated with the information, which is aquired during other periods of fixation to build up the impression of a fully represented environment. Thus, there is the need to move the eyes around via saccades. To aquire adequate information pieces our oculomotor system has to guarantee for a precise and well-defined saccade execution. Thus, it has to constantly monitor the execution of saccades and has to compensate for saccadic inaccuracies whenever they occur. The underlying neuronal mechanism is called saccadic adaptation mechanism.
My research interest focuses on this particular adaptation mechanism. In more detail I am interested in similarities and differences between inward adaptation, i.e. saccade shortening, and outward adaptation, i.e. saccade lengthening. A further research interest focuses on the influences of saccadic adaptation on visual perception. Finally, I am interested in a more global aspect of vision, i.e. I am interested in the phenomenon of change blindness, which refers to observers‘ difficulties to see a change during an interruption.

Promotion Committee

Prof. Dr. Markus Lappe (Supervisor)
Prof. Dr. Fred Hamker
Prof. Dr. Norbert Sachser

Publications

Schnier, F., Zimmermann, E., and Lappe, M. (2010). Adaptation and mislocalization fields for saccadic outward adaptation in humans. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 3(3)(4):1–18.

Zimmermann, E., Schnier, F., and Lappe, M. (2010). The contribution of scene
context on change detection performance. Vision Research, 50(20):2062–2068.

Schnier, F. and Lappe, M. (2011). Differences in intersaccadic adaption transfer between inward and outward adaption. Journal of Neurophysiology 106:1399-1410

Schnier, F. and Lappe, M. (2011). Mislocalization of stationary and flashed bars after inward and outward adaption of reactive saccades. (in prep.)

Conference Contributions

Schnier, F., Zimmermann, E., and Lappe, M., Connection between motor space and perceptual space in saccadic outward adaptation. Poster presented at the 15th European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM), Southampton, GB, 2009

CV