Abstract
Recent studies provide evidence for task-specific influences on saccadic eye movements. For instance, saccades exhibit higher peak velocity when the task requires coordinating eye and hand movements. The current study shows that the need to process task-relevant visual information at the saccade endpoint can be, in itself, sufficient to cause such effects. In this study, participants performed a visual discrimination task which required a saccade for successful completion. We compared the characteristics of these task-related saccades to those of classical target-elicited saccades, which required participants to fixate a visual target without performing a discrimination task. The results show that task-related saccades are faster and initiated earlier than target-elicited saccades. Differences between both saccade types are also noted in their saccade reaction time distributions and their main sequences, i.e., the relationship between saccade velocity, duration, and amplitude.
Highlights
Saccades are rapid eye movements which are performed 3–4 times a second to fixate on a different spot in the environment [1]
Assuming that task-related saccades are categorically different from classical target-elicited saccades and that the results of previous experiments (e.g. [8]) can in part be explained by this difference, we expected shorter saccade reaction times and higher peak velocities in the discriminate condition
The present study compared the characteristics of task-related saccades, which supported a visual discrimination task, and classical target-elicited saccades, which were not followed by such a task
Summary
Saccades are rapid eye movements which are performed 3–4 times a second to fixate on a different spot in the environment [1]. Brighter stimuli lead to quicker initiation of saccades [2] In experiments such as this, the saccade is elicited by the appearing target but the task does not inherently require the participant to fixate. The purpose of this paper is to compare the characteristics of classical target-elicited saccades, which do not require fixation per se, to taskrelated saccades, which require fixation due to task demands. Considering this distinction is important to avoid potential confounds in experimental tests of the oculomtor system’s variability
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