Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Master of Science

Program

Kinesiology

Supervisor

Dr. Matthew Heath

Abstract

Prosaccades are rapid eye movements with direct stimulus and response relations and are designed to bring the fovea onto a target or area of interest. In contrast, antisaccades require the inhibition of a prosaccade and the evocation of a saccade to a target’s mirror-symmetrical location. Previous work has shown that a remote (i.e., midline, contralateral) – but not proximal (i.e., ipsilateral) – task-irrelevant distractor relative to a visual target delays prosaccade reaction times (RT) (i.e., remote distractor effect: RDE). To my knowledge, however, no work has examined whether antisaccade RTs are similarly influenced by a RDE. Accordingly, I sought to determine whether planning costs for antisaccades are similarly dependent on the location-specific presentation of a distractor. In Chapter Two, I demonstrate increased antisaccade RTs independent of the spatial location of a distractor. Based on this result, I concluded that distractor-related antisaccade costs reflect the top-down evocation of explicit response-selection rules.

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