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Involuntary inhibition of movement initiation alters oculomotor competition resolution

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Abstract

Identifying a stimulus as the target for a goal-directed movement involves inhibiting competing responses. Separable inhibitory interconnections bias local competition to ensure only one stimulus is selected and to alter movement initiation. Behavioural evidence of these inhibitory processes comes from the effects of distracters on oculomotor landing positions and saccade latencies. Here, we investigate the relationship between these two sources of inhibition. Targets were presented with or without close and remote distracters. In separate experiments the possible position and identity of the target and distracters were manipulated. In all cases saccade landing position was found to be less affected by the presence of the close distracter when remote distracters were also present. The involuntary increase in the latency of saccade initiation caused by the presence of the remote distracters alters the state of competitive processes involved in selecting the saccade target thus changing its landing position.

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Notes

  1. Main effect of target distance (F 1,12 = 7.1, p < 0.05); interaction between target distance and experiment (F 1,12 = 9.2, p < 0.05) and an interaction between global distracter and target distance (F 1,12 = 8.32, p < 0.05). These stem from latencies elicited to near targets. Latencies are longer for near targets in experiment 2b and over both experiments the presence of the ipsilateral distractor reduced saccade latency to the near target but not those to the far target. It is unclear what could be underlying this effect, but it has no bearing on the current investigation.

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Acknowledgments

The work was funded by a grant from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (awarded to E.M.). Thanks to Casimir Ludwig and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments.

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  1. School of Psychology, University of Reading, Reading, Berkshire, UK

    Alice G. Cruickshank & Eugene McSorley

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  1. Alice G. Cruickshank
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  2. Eugene McSorley
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Correspondence to Alice G. Cruickshank.

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Cruickshank, A.G., McSorley, E. Involuntary inhibition of movement initiation alters oculomotor competition resolution. Exp Brain Res 193, 467–476 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-008-1645-9

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