Programming of Stimulus-Elicited Saccadic Eye Movements

Abstract

Eye movements and visual cognition have in the past seemed like two separate continents separated by an enormous and ill-charted ocean. As the chapters in this volume show, many navigators are now successfully venturing on this ocean. However, the strategy of the work described here is somewhat more modest and may be likened to that of the early explorers who kept well within sight of the coastline. The coastline is the target-elicited saccadic eye movement, where a subject orients to a well-defined target that appears suddenly in the visual periphery. This is a piece of behavior that has been extensively studied and is reasonably well understood. It is argued that it can provide a good point of departure for examining cognitive influences.