Error awareness and antisaccade performance

Abstract

In the antisaccade task, healthy participants often make errors by saccading towards the sudden onset target, despite instructions to saccade to the mirror image location. One interesting and relatively unexplored feature of antisaccade performance is that participants are typically unaware of a large proportion of the errors they make. Across two experiments, we explored the extent to which error awareness is altered by manipulations known to affect antisaccade error rate. In experiment 1, participants performed the antisaccade task under standard instructions, instructions to respond as quickly as possible or instructions to delay responding. Delay instructions significantly reduced antisaccade error rate compared to the other instructions, but this reduction was driven by a decrease only in the number of errors that participants were aware of-the number of errors of which participants were unaware remained constant across instruction condition. In experiment 2, participants performed antisaccades alone, or concurrently with two different distractor tasks-spatial tapping and random number generation task. Both the dual task conditions increased the number of errors of which participants were aware, but again, unaware error rates remained unchanged. These results are discussed in the light of recent models of antisaccade performance and the role of conscious awareness in error correction.