Saccadic Latency as a Function of Target Duration in a Spatial Localization Task

Abstract

This study examined a potential confound in the inverse relationship between target duration and saccadic latency reported by Adam, Ketelaars, Kingma, and Hoek in 1993. Eight participants located a briefly flashed target by moving the eyes and the cursor toward its position in a (backward) mask condition and in a no-mask condition. Analysis showed similar saccadic latencies in both conditions, thereby refuting the potentially confounding role of the backward masking procedure. It is tentatively suggested that the longer saccadic latencies noted for shorter target durations may be associated with delayed accumulation of evidence for the detection of the target.