Abstract
BackgroundChildren are able to inhibit a prepotent reaction to suddenly arising visual stimuli, although this skill is not yet as pronounced as it is in adulthood. However, up to now the inhibition mechanism to acoustic stimuli has been scarcely investigatedMethodsReflexive (prosaccade) and inhibitory (antisaccade) responses to visual and acoustic targets were examined with an eye tracker system in 31 children between seven and twelve years of age using a gap-overlap task and two target eccentricities.ResultsAcoustically cued saccades had longer reaction times than visually cued saccades. A gap effect (i.e., shorter reaction time in the gap than the overlap condition) was only found for visually elicited saccades, whereas an eccentricity effect (i.e., faster saccades to more laterally presented targets - 12° vs. 6° or rather 90° vs. 45°) was only present in the acoustic condition. Longer reaction times of antisaccades compared to prosaccades were found only in the visual task. Across both tasks the typical pattern of elevated error rates in the antisaccade condition was found. Antisaccade errors declined with age, indicating an ongoing development of inhibitory functions.ConclusionsThe present results lay the ground for further studies of acoustically triggered saccades in typically as well as atypically developing children and it might thus be possible to upgrade physiological diagnostic tools.
Highlights
Children are able to inhibit a prepotent reaction to suddenly arising visual stimuli, this skill is not yet as pronounced as it is in adulthood
We investigated children between seven and twelve years of age regarding the impact of central fixation engagement as well as target eccentricity on pro- and antisaccades elicited by visual and acoustic peripheral targets
Saccadic Reaction Times Results will be restricted to correct trials, since incorrect trials were rare in some conditions, potentially skewing latency results
Summary
Children are able to inhibit a prepotent reaction to suddenly arising visual stimuli, this skill is not yet as pronounced as it is in adulthood. Up to now the inhibition mechanism to acoustic stimuli has been scarcely investigated It is a reflex-like feature of human behaviour to look towards sudden changes in our visual field. In order to not look towards a suddenly appearing peripheral target, volitional inhibition of the visual grasp reflex is required This can be investigated with antisaccade tasks [2]. The SRT gap effect is bigger for prosaccades than for antisaccades [4] and more pronounced in children than in young adults [3,7,11] Another factor affecting direction errors and SRT is the peripheral position (eccentricity) of the target. Studies of ocular motor performance in children have shown that SRT decreases with age [14] as does the proportion of direction errors, at a different pace [3,6,7,11,15]
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