Speed of visual processing across the visual field

Despite the phenomenological experience of vision being stable and uniform in both space and time, our visual system constructs this representation from markedly inhomogeneous spatial and temporal structures. While considerable progress has been made in understanding the inhomogeneities in spatial vision, much less attention has been given to the inhomogeneities in the temporal dynamics of vision. Specifically, little is known about how speed of processing varies across the visual field. In this non-systematic review, we focus primarily on psychophysical and neurophysiological studies of low-level photopic vision to elucidate how the speed of visual processing changes with eccentricity. Specifically, we examine key findings from major investigations on this topic, highlighting areas of convergence, points of divergence, and aspects that remain unresolved.