Abstract
Humans scan their visual environment using saccade eye movements. Where we look is influenced by bottom-up salience and top-down factors, like value. For reactive saccades in response to suddenly appearing stimuli, it has been shown that short-latency saccades are biased towards salience, and that top-down control increases with increasing latency. Here, we show, in a series of six experiments, that this transition towards top-down control is not determined by the time it takes to integrate value information into the saccade plan, but by the time it takes to inhibit suddenly appearing salient stimuli. Participants made consecutive saccades to three fixation crosses and a vertical bar consisting of a high-salient and a rewarded low-salient region. Endpoints on the bar were biased towards salience whenever it appeared or reappeared shortly before the last saccade was initiated. This was also true when the eye movement was already planned. When the location of the suddenly appearing salient region was predictable, saccades were aimed in the opposite direction to nullify this sudden onset effect. Successfully inhibiting salience, however, could only be achieved by previewing the target. These findings highlight the importance of inhibition for top-down eye-movement control.
Highlights
Humans scan their visual environment using saccade eye movements
When salience and behavioral goals compete for oculomotor control, early saccades are biased towards salience, and long-latency saccades are biased towards behavioral goals (Ghahghaei & Verghese, 2015; Ludwig & Gilchrist, 2002; Salinas et al, 2019; Schütz, Trommershäuser, & Gegenfurtner, 2012; van Zoest, Donk, & Theeuwes, 2004)
All error bars result from comparing a rewarded with the corresponding unrewarded condition, unless the sudden onset data in b, which results from a comparison with the rewarded continuous data. (Color figure online) we observed a transition in vertical endpoints from salience to reward when the target suddenly appeared before the saccade was initiated, but not when the target was continuously displayed throughout the sequence
Summary
Humans scan their visual environment using saccade eye movements. Where we look is influenced by bottom-up salience and top-down factors, like value. The fact that the contribution of salience to saccade target selection strongly depends on the timing of the saccade is reflected in a finding by Donk and van Zoest (2008): In an array of vertical (or horizontal) lines, Atten Percept Psychophys (2020) 82:3863–3877 two lines deviated from the cardinal axis One of these two singletons was defined by a small the other by a large orientation contrast. Saccade endpoints showed a dynamic transition from the salient towards the rewarded region This transition from bottom-up to top-down eye-movement control was interpreted in terms of the time it takes to integrate information about value into the saccade plan (Ghahghaei & Verghese, 2015; Schütz et al, 2012). Saccades into the low-salient region were rewarded in selected conditions
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