Peripheral vision is extremely good at spotting movement at low resolution and moving the eye to look at it.

I don't know if it's faster, but it's a non-trivial part of the experience.

It's good enough to see flickering on crt monitors at 50-60hz for some people.

Yea, I've heard and noticed that as well (thought about adding a note about it to my original comment). But what I'm curious about is the timing. What I suspect is that peripherals are more sensitive to motion, but still lag slightly behind the center of focus. I'm not sure if it's dependent on how actively you are trying to focus. I'd love to learn more about this, but I didn't find anything when I looked online a bit.