Saccadic eye movements bring objects from the peripheral visual field to the fovea. To establish transsaccadic object correspondence (TOC), specific features - such as shape, texture, displacement, size, and contrast - are used to match pre- and postsaccadic information. However, the available object information can change when objects move during a saccade and become partially-occluded by other objects. This raises the question how the visual system deals with such changes and if perceptual completion can aid TOC. Here, we used a postsaccadic target selection task to understand the dynamics of TOC and to examine if observers are able to establish TOC to an object that is partially occluded and amodally completed. As soon as the observers initiated a horizontal saccade to the presaccadic peripheral object, it was replaced by two vertically displaced candidates. One candidate was either behind or in front of another object, such that it was either partially-occluded or fully-visible. The other candidate was either changed in shape or identical to the presaccadic object.
We found longer corrective saccade latencies when observers targeted the candidate that overlapped with the other object, indicating a cost for saccades to a more complex configuration. Corrective saccades showed faster latencies with amodal completion aiding detection of the partially-occluded target compared to its ambiguous counterpart, where completion was hindering for target selection. These findings indicate an involvement of higher visual areas for postsaccadic recognition of complex objects and suggest that amodal completion can be used to establish TOC.