myth of persistent vision

Still photo from Chaplin's Behind the Screen (1916)

At the cinema we see a continuous moving image rather than a succession of still images, flashed, on an off fifty times per second. Anderson and Anderson (1993) prefer an interactive vision model to explain this “illusion” rather than the “myth of persistent vision” perpetuated by many film theorists. As far as our visual systems are concerned, “the motion in the motion picture… is real motion.” Anderson and Anderson categorize the way we process motion in the real world as “active” and “meaning-seeking”:

We rapidly sample the world about us, noting the things that change and the things that do not change. We turn our heads for a better view; we move left or right to gain additional information provided by a different angle. We move closer or farther away. We actively seek more information about things that interest us. We seek greater clarity of both our vision and our understanding. And our perceptual system continuously notes whether everything in our field of vision is moving or whether only certain things are moving, the former indicating that we are moving, and the latter that something else is moving.

This exploratory perspective is entirely consistent with the active vision model. Dennett (1991: 468) cuts to the chase:

The parafoveal visual system is primarily an alarm system, composed of sentries designed to call for saccades when change is noticed.

Anderson, Joseph and Barbara. (1993) The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited, Journal of Film and Video. 45:1, 3-12.
Dennett C. Dennett (1991) Consciousness Explained. Little Brown and Company, Boston, London and Toronto.