Is covert attention necessary for programming accurate saccades? Evidence from saccade-locked event-related potentials

Talcott, Travis N.; Kiat, John E.; Luck, Steven J.; Gaspelin, Nicholas · 2023 · Attention Perception & Psychophysics

DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02775-5

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Summary

This study investigates whether covert attention, specifically indexed by the N2pc component of event-related potentials (ERPs), is a mandatory prerequisite for programming accurate saccadic eye movements. While traditional models assume that attention shifts to a target location prior to gaze to enhance perceptual processing, recent evidence suggests this relationship is not obligatory. The authors aimed to determine the conditions under which a presaccadic N2pc occurs and whether its presence or magnitude correlates with improved saccade accuracy. The researchers conducted three experiments using a saccade-to-target paradigm where participants searched for a letter of a specific color and directed their gaze to it. Electroencephalography (EEG) and eye-tracking data were coregistered, allowing for saccade-locked ERP analysis that avoids ocular artifacts. Experiment 1 utilized a simple search task with two potential target locations. Experiment 2 added distractors near the target to increase filtering demands. Experiment 3 increased the number of potential target locations to four. In all experiments, the authors analyzed the presence of the N2pc component in the 50 ms preceding saccade onset and assessed its relationship with saccadic speed and accuracy. Additionally, they employed ERP decoding using support vector machines to determine if target location information was present in neural signals before eye movement initiation. The results demonstrated that the presaccadic N2pc was not consistently present; it only emerged in Experiment 3, where the search task involved multiple potential target locations and distractors. In the simpler conditions of Experiments 1 and 2, no presaccadic N2pc was observed despite participants making fast and accurate eye movements. Crucially, across all experiments, there was no evidence that the presence or magnitude of the presaccadic N2pc was associated with improved saccade accuracy or speed. However, ERP decoding analyses revealed that the target location could be classified with above-chance accuracy approximately 100 ms before saccade onset in all experiments, regardless of whether an N2pc was present. These findings challenge the assumption that covert attentional shifts indexed by the N2pc are necessary for precise gaze control. The authors conclude that the N2pc reflects a conditional attentional mechanism deployed only under specific task demands, such as high search complexity, rather than a mandatory step in saccade programming. The successful decoding of target location prior to eye movements suggests that other cognitive processes, such as motor preparation or feature-based attention, may support accurate gaze control independently of the spatial attentional mechanism measured by the N2pc.

Key finding

The covert attentional mechanism indexed by the N2pc component is not necessary for precise gaze control, as its presence did not correlate with improved saccade accuracy.

Methodology

lab_experiment

Sample size: 20

Provenance

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Topics

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• eye movements scanning
• peripheral attention