Visual transients without feature changes are sufficient for the percept of a change

A visual transient due to a sudden visual change is generally considered to draw our attention to a location of interest. In a series of experiments we investigated how visual transients facilitate change detection in a scene. In line with earlier reports, we found that a transient sensation has its roots in a temporal interaction at a monocular processing level. Interestingly, we also show that visual transients make it possible to detect a change in the eye of origin, despite the fact that observers have no clue as to which eye is stimulated. That is, visual transients are detected even when there is no perceptual change in the visual content after binocular fusion. More importantly, we show that observers cannot distinguish the transient due to a change in eye of origin from a feature change (the orientation of a Gabor). Both are perceived as actual changes. We conclude that a transient signal is sufficient for the visual system to judge whether something has changed over time.