 If a target which is displaced during a saccade is not present at the end of the saccade, but reappears a short time later after a blank interval, subjects are able to regain the ability to successfully detect whether the target has moved.In these studies it was discovered that as the gap between the end of the saccade and the presentation of the shifted target increases, subjects become much more accurate at detecting displacement, and that with a gap of 150 ms participants had reached ceiling in their performance.Deubel and colleagues termed this the 'blanking effect' (Deubel et al., 1996; Deubel et al., 2004).