Acting without seeing: eye movements reveal visual processing without awareness

• We review differences and dissociations between visual perception and eye movements.
• These differences can be in response variability, magnitude (quantitative), or direction (qualitative dissociations).
• Eye movements can be sensitive to visual features that fail to reach awareness.
• We discuss the possible role of subcortical pathways for visual processing without awareness.

Visual perception and eye movements are considered to be tightly linked. Diverse fields, ranging from developmental psychology to computer science, utilize eye tracking to measure visual perception. However, this prevailing view has been challenged by recent behavioral studies. Here, we review converging evidence revealing dissociations between the contents of perceptual awareness and different types of eye movement. Such dissociations reveal situations in which eye movements are sensitive to particular visual features that fail to modulate perceptual reports. We also discuss neurophysiological, neuroimaging, and clinical studies supporting the role of subcortical pathways for visual processing without awareness. Our review links awareness to perceptual-eye movement dissociations and furthers our understanding of the brain pathways underlying vision and movement with and without awareness.