Abstract
As we look around the world, selecting our targets, competing events may occur at other locations. Depending on current goals, the viewer must decide whether to look at new events or to ignore them. Two experimental paradigms formalize these response options: double-step saccades and saccadic inhibition. In the first, the viewer must reorient to a newly appearing target; in the second, they must ignore it. Until now, the relationship between reorienting and inhibition has been unexplored. In three experiments, we found saccadic inhibition ∼100 msec after a new target onset, regardless of the task instruction. Moreover, if this automatic inhibition is boosted by an irrelevant flash, reorienting is facilitated, suggesting that saccadic inhibition plays a crucial role in visual behavior, as a bottom-up brake that buys the time needed for decisional processes to act. Saccadic inhibition may be a ubiquitous pause signal that provides the flexibility for voluntary behavior to emerge.
Highlights
As we look around the world, selecting the targets of our eye movements, the scene may change
Saccadic inhibition may be a ubiquitous pause signal that provides the flexibility for voluntary behavior to emerge. ■
Saccadic inhibition is indicated by the bimodality of these distributions; its consistency across participants is striking, with a depression of saccadic activity centered around 100 msec after the transient change (Buonocore, McIntosh, & Melcher, 2016; Buonocore & McIntosh 2008, 2012, 2013; Bompas & Sumner, 2011; Edelman & Xu 2009; Reingold & Stampe, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004)
Summary
As we look around the world, selecting the targets of our eye movements, the scene may change. Our planned target may move or an event of greater urgency may occur at another location. The viewer must decide whether to look at new events or to ignore them. These response options have been formalized within two powerful experimental paradigms: doublestep saccades and saccadic inhibition. The viewer must reorient to a target appearing shortly before a planned saccade; in the second, they must ignore it. Each paradigm has been studied extensively, but the relationship between reorienting and inhibition is hitherto unexplored. This study seeks to bridge that gap, testing the presence and possible functional role of oculomotor distraction in reorienting
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