Abstract
Eye movements are inhibited prior to the onset of temporally-predictable visual targets. This oculomotor inhibition effect could be considered a marker for the formation of temporal expectations and the allocation of temporal attention in the visual domain. Here we show that eye movements are also inhibited before predictable auditory targets. In two experiments, we manipulate the period between a cue and an auditory target to be either predictable or unpredictable. The findings show that although there is no perceptual gain from avoiding gaze-shifts in this procedure, saccades and blinks are inhibited prior to predictable relative to unpredictable auditory targets. These findings show that oculomotor inhibition occurs prior to auditory targets. This link between auditory expectation and oculomotor behavior reveals a multimodal perception action coupling, which has a central role in temporal expectations.
Highlights
Eye movements are inhibited prior to the onset of temporally-predictable visual targets
We focused on the shortest foreperiod of 1 s, as performance for short foreperiods is less affected by modulations that are due to the progress of time following the cue
In Experiment 1 we examined whether the evolution of this inhibition across time was modulated by predictability, and found that a 3.5
Summary
Eye movements are inhibited prior to the onset of temporally-predictable visual targets. The findings show that there is no perceptual gain from avoiding gaze-shifts in this procedure, saccades and blinks are inhibited prior to predictable relative to unpredictable auditory targets. The effect of temporal expectations on perceptual readiness is often demonstrated by enhanced behavioral performance, i.e., faster reaction times (RTs) and higher accuracy rates for anticipated targets[1]. We have found that saccades and blinks are more strongly inhibited prior to the appearance of a predictable, relative to an unpredictable, visual target This pretarget oculomotor effect emerged with targets embedded in a rhythmic stream of stimulation[2], with targets associated with temporal cues[3], and in a temporal attention task in which the time of the target was fully predictable and selective attention was manipulated[4]. It is yet unknown whether eye movements are modulated prior to nonvisual tasks, i.e., whether they reflect nonvisual expectation
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