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J Neurophysiol (May 21, 2008). doi:10.1152/jn.90268.2008
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Submitted on February 13, 2008
Revised on April 5, 2008
Accepted on May 17, 2008

The 'diagonal effect': a systematic error in oblique antisaccades

John D Koehn1, Elizabeth Roy1, and Jason J. S. Barton1*

1 University of British Columbia

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jasonbarton{at}shaw.ca.

Antisaccades are known to show greater variable error and also a systematic hypometria in their amplitude, as compared to visually guided prosaccades. In this study we examined whether their accuracy in direction (as opposed to amplitude) also showed a systematic error. We had human subjects perform prosaccades and antisaccades to goals located at a variety of polar angles. In the first experiment, subjects made prosaccades or antisaccades to one of eight equidistant locations in each block, while in the second they made saccades to one of two equidistant locations per block. In the third, they made antisaccades to one of two locations at different distances but with the same polar angle in each block. Regardless of block design, the results consistently showed a saccadic systematic error, in that oblique antisaccades (but not prosaccades) requiring unequal vertical and horizontal vector components were deviated towards the 45° diagonal meridians. This finding could not be attributed to range effects in either Cartesian or polar coordinates. A perceptual origin of the diagonal effect is suggested by similar systematic errors in other studies of memory-guided manual reaching or perceptual estimation of direction, and may indicate a common spatial bias when there is uncertain information about spatial location.







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