Simulated Viewpoint Jitter Shakes Sensory Conflict Accounts of Vection

Sensory conflict has been used to explain the way we perceive and control our self-motion, as well as the aetiology of motion sickness. However, recent research on simulated viewpoint jitter provides a strong challenge to one core prediction of these theories — that increasing sensory conflict should always impair visually induced illusions of self-motion (known as vection). These studies show that jittering self-motion displays (thought to generate significant and sustained visual–vestibular conflict) actually induce superior vection to comparable non-jittering displays (thought to generate only minimal/transient sensory conflict). Here we review viewpoint jitter effects on vection, postural sway, eye-movements and motion sickness, and relate them to recent behavioural and neurophysiological findings. It is shown that jitter research provides important insights into the role that sensory interaction plays in self-motion perception.