The Role of Visual Attention in Saccadic Eye Movements

Overview

Journal Percept Psychophys

Specialties Psychiatry
Psychology

Date 1995 Aug 1

PMID 7651803

Citations 385

Authors

J E Hoffman

B Subramaniam

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The relationship between saccadic eye movements and covert orienting or visual spatial attention was investigated in two experiments. In the first experiment, subjects were required to make a saccade to a specified location while also detecting a visual target presented just prior to the eye movement. Detection accuracy was highest when the location of the target coincided with the location of the saccade, suggesting that subjects use spatial attention in the programming and/or execution of saccadic eye movements. In the second experiment, subjects were explicitly directed to attend to a particular location and to make a saccade to the same location or to a different one. Superior target detection occurred at the saccade location regardless of attention instructions. This finding shows that subjects cannot move their eyes to one location and attend to a different one. The result of these experiments suggest that visuospatial attention is an important mechanism in generating voluntary saccadic eye movements.

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