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Stimulus-driven saccades are characterized by an invariant undershooting bias: no evidence for a range effect

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Abstract

Saccade endpoints are most frequently characterized by an undershooting bias. Notably, however, some evidence suggests that saccades can be made to systematically under- or overshoot a target based on the magnitude of the eccentricities within a given block of trials (i.e., the oculomotor range effect hypothesis). To address that issue, participants completed stimulus-driven saccades in separate blocks of trials (i.e., proximal vs. distal) that entailed an equal number of targets but differed with respect to the magnitude of their eccentricities. In the proximal block, target eccentricities were 3.0°, 5.5°, 8.0°, 10.5° and 13.0°, whereas in the distal block target eccentricities were 10.5°, 13.0°, 15.5°, 18.0° and 20.5°. If the range effect represents a tenable hypothesis, then the magnitude of target eccentricities within each block should selectively influence saccade endpoint bias. More specifically, the eccentricities common to the proximal and distal blocks (i.e., 10.5° and 13.0°) should elicit a systematic under- and overshooting bias, respectively. Results for the proximal and distal blocks showed a reliable undershooting bias across target eccentricities, and a direct comparison of the common eccentricities indicated that the undershooting bias was not modulated between blocks. Moreover, our results show that the presence of online target vision did not influence the undershooting bias. Thus, the present findings provide no support for an oculomotor range effect; rather, results evince the mediation of saccades via a control strategy that minimizes movement time and/or the energy requirements of the response.

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Notes

  1. A Web of Science search indicated that Kapoula (1985) and Kapoula and Robinson (1986) have been cited 84 and 72 times, respectively. A Google Scholar search indicated 107 and 97 citations for each article.

  2. We define the saccades studied here as being stimulus-driven given that the onset of an exogenously presented visual target served as the response imperative. Notably, stimulus-driven saccades involve direct spatial mapping between stimulus and response, and their exogenous presentation entails minimal top-down influence (Rossetti et al. 2005).

  3. Saccade amplitudes in the left and right visual fields did not reliably differ (F < 1). For that reason, visual field was a collapsed factor in our ANOVA model.

  4. Kapoula (1985) interpreted her data via descriptive statistics (i.e., means) and did not include inferential analyses. However, our inferential analyses of the participant-specific data associated with Kapoula’s proximal block (see Table 1 of that work) via single-sample t statistics contrasting saccade amplitudes to veridical target location yielded the following 2.7°: t(3) = 22.26, p < 0.001; 4.4°: t(3) = 0.65, p = 0.56; 6.1°: t(3) = −0.78, p = 0.48; 7.8°: t(3) = −2.86, p = 0.06; 9.5°: t(3) = −3.35, p < 0.05. Thus, only the most proximal and most distal target eccentricities produced amplitudes that reliably differed from veridical target location. Kapoula’s distal block included two participants; we therefore did not submit those data to inferential examination.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and by an Academic Development Fund and Faculty Scholar Award from the University of Western Ontario.

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  1. School of Kinesiology and Graduate Program in Neuroscience, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, N6A 3K7, Canada

    Caitlin Gillen, Jeffrey Weiler & Matthew Heath

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  1. Caitlin Gillen
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  2. Jeffrey Weiler
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  3. Matthew Heath
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Correspondence to Matthew Heath.

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Gillen, C., Weiler, J. & Heath, M. Stimulus-driven saccades are characterized by an invariant undershooting bias: no evidence for a range effect. Exp Brain Res 230, 165–174 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3640-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-013-3640-z

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