Looking for Discriminating Is Different from Looking for Looking's Sake

Hans Joachim Bieg, Jean Pierre Bresciani, Heinrich H. Bülthoff, Lewis L. Chuang

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    16 Citations (Scopus)

    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.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article numbere45445
    JournalPloS one
    Volume7
    Issue number9
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2012 Sept 25

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • General

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