Trial type probability modulates the cost of antisaccades
Journal
Journal of Neurophysiology
Journal Volume
106
Journal Issue
2
Start Page
515
End Page
526
ISSN
0022-3077
1522-1598
Date Issued
2011-01-01
Author(s)
Chiau, Hui-Yan
Su, Jia-Han
Tzeng, Ovid J. L.
Hung, Daisy L.
Muggleton, Neil G.
Juan, Chi-Hung
DOI
10.1152/jn.00399.2010
Abstract
The antisaccade task, where eye movements are made away from a target, has been used to investigate the flexibility of cognitive control of behavior. Antisaccades usually have longer saccade latencies than prosaccades, the so-called antisaccade cost. Recent studies have shown that this antisaccade cost can be modulated by event probability. This may mean that the antisaccade cost can be reduced, or even reversed, if the probability of surrounding events favors the execution of antisaccades. The probabilities of prosaccades and antisaccades were systematically manipulated by changing the proportion of a certain type of trial in an interleaved pro/antisaccades task. We aimed to disentangle the intertwined relationship between trial type probabilities and the antisaccade cost with the ultimate goal of elucidating how probabilities of trial types modulate human flexible behaviors, as well as the characteristics of such modulation effects. To this end, we examined whether implicit trial type probability can influence saccade latencies and also manipulated the difficulty of cue discriminability to see how effects of trial type probability would change when the demand on visual perceptual analysis was high or low. A mixed-effects model was applied to the analysis to dissect the factors contributing to the modulation effects of trial type probabilities. Our results suggest that the trial type probability is one robust determinant of antisaccade cost. These findings highlight the importance of implicit probability in the flexibility of cognitive control of behavior.
Subjects
Saccade
Visual attention
Voluntary control
Publisher
American Physiological Society
Type
journal article