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Is the relationship of prosaccade reaction times and antisaccade errors mediated by working memory?

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Abstract

The mechanisms that control eye movements in the antisaccade task are not fully understood. One influential theory claims that the generation of antisaccades is dependent on the capacity of working memory. Previous research also suggests that antisaccades are influenced by the relative processing speeds of the exogenous and endogenous saccadic pathways. However, the relationship between these factors is unclear, in particular whether or not the effect of the relative speed of the pro and antisaccade pathways is mediated by working memory. The present study contrasted the performance of healthy individuals with high and low working memory in the antisaccade and prosaccade tasks. Path analyses revealed that antisaccade errors were strongly predicted by the mean reaction times of prosaccades and that this relationship was not mediated by differences in working memory. These data suggest that antisaccade errors are directly related to the speed of saccadic programming. These findings are discussed in terms of a race competition model of antisaccade control.

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Notes

  1. The proposal that exogenous and endogenous saccade can be programmed simultaneously has also received recent support (e.g. Walker and McSorley 2006).

  2. We use the term express saccade as a convenient label for a subgroup of fast saccades taken from the general population of saccades. We remain agnostic as to their origin or the relationship to the reference population of saccades.

  3. Afferent and efferent conduction times are assumed to be relatively constant therefore making a minor contribution to overall saccade latency variance (e.g. Hallett and Adams 1980).

  4. Conway and Engle use the term ‘attention’ to describe this process. However, we will reserve ‘attention’ to describe the rapid orientation of spatial processing (i.e. attention) to a luminance change or event in the periphery (Posner et al. 1982).

  5. All percentages are expresses as a function of ‘valid’ trials.

  6. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for highlighting this issue.

  7. The disruption of a WM signal would be more likely to yield effects both on the prosaccade errors and a slowing of the correct AS. Therefore, it is difficult to see how this selective effect could be parsimoniously explained in terms of WM.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council Ph.D studentship (EP). JM was funded by the Sir John Fisher Foundation. IST acknowledges support from the Medical Research Council (grant number G0701642). We are grateful to Dr John Towse for the reading span software that was written as part of an Economic and Social Research Council grant (RES-000-23-0859). We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers who provided very helpful comments on an earlier manuscript.

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Correspondence to Trevor J. Crawford.

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Crawford, T.J., Parker, E., Solis-Trapala, I. et al. Is the relationship of prosaccade reaction times and antisaccade errors mediated by working memory?. Exp Brain Res 208, 385–397 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-010-2488-8

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