Control of reflexive and voluntary saccades in the gap effect

Abstract

In two experiments, we examined whether voluntary and reflexive saccades shared a common fixation disengagement mechanism. Participants were required to perform a variety of tasks, each requiring a different level of information processing of the display prior to execution of the saccade. In Experiment 1, participants executed either a prosaccade or an antisaccade upon detecting a stimulus array. In Experiment 2, participants executed a prosaccade to a stimulus array only if the array contained a target item. The target could be a line (easy search) or a digit (difficult search). The critical manipulation in both experiments was the relative timing between the removal of the fixation stimulus and the onset of the stimulus array. In both experiments, it was found that saccadic latencies were shortest when the fixation stimulus was removed before the onset of the stimulus array - a gap effect. It was concluded that reflexive and voluntary saccades share a common fixation disengagement mechanism that is largely independent of higher level cognitive processes.