Attentional enhancement along the path of a sequence of saccades

Abstract

One of the central questions concerning the role of attention in saccadic control is the relationship between the selective filter that determines the effective target of a saccade and the attentional filter that serves perception. Results from several studies employing dual-task methods have show superior perceptual performance at the location that contains the target of a saccade, implying that a single attentional filter is used both by saccadic and perceptual systems (Godijn & Theeuwes, 2003; Kowler, Anderson, Dosher, & Blaser, 1995). Recently, Gersch, Kowler, and Dosher (2004) examined the links between attention and saccades executed as part of repetitive sequences of several eye movements, rather than as single eye movements programmed in isolation. Perceptual performance, which was tested during the pauses between saccades, was better at the target of the next saccade in the sequence than at other extrafoveal locations. Locations that were targets of any subsequent saccades in the sequence showed no perceptual enhancement, and thus were not treated differently by the perceptual system than locations that never were to be fixated at all. Linking extrafoveal visual attention exclusively to the goal of the next saccade would seem to place a severe limit on the ability to sample information across the visual field. Such a state of affairs would imply