The guidance of saccadic eye movements to perceptually mislocalized visual an non-visual targets

Abstract

The present experiment examined whether saccadic eye movements to visual targets are dependent on the perceived directions of the targets or on their retinally specified directions. Perceptual mislocalizations of visual targets were induced by having the target light attached to a subject's stationary hand while his biceps or triceps muscle was vibrated. Such vibration leads to apparent extension or flexion of the subject's restrained forearm and perceived visual motion of the stationary target light (6-8). Subjects always made accurate saccadic eye movements to a visual target, even when the target was perceptually mislocalized by as much as 20 degrees. By contrast, when subjects made saccadic eye movements to a nonvisual target, the location of their hand in the dark, they always looked to the perceived direction of the target even though it did not necessarily correspond to the true direction. These findings indicate that a distinction is maintained between "reflexive aspects" of oculomotor control related to foveation and the computation of perceived visual direction.