Attention and selection for predictive smooth pursuit eye movements

Abstract

Humans cannot typically produce smooth eye movements in the absence of a moving stimulus. However, they can produce predictive smooth eye movements if they expect a target of a known velocity to reappear. Here, we observed that participants could extract velocity information from two simultaneously presented moving targets in order to produce a subsequent predictive smooth eye movement for one of the two targets. Subjects fixated a stationary cross during the presentation of two targets, moving rightward at different velocities. In the next presentation, a single target was presented, which participants tracked with their eyes. A static cue, presented 700 ms before the moving target, indicated which of the two targets would be presented. Predictive eye movements were of an appropriate velocity, even when participants did not know in advance which of the two targets would subsequently be cued. However, the scaling of predictive eye velocity was marginally less accurate in this divided attention condition than when participants knew the identity of the cued target in advance, or a single target was presented during fixation. In a second experiment, we found that the velocity cued on the previous trial had a greater effect than the uncued velocity on the current trial. The negligible effect of the uncued velocity indicates that participants were extremely effective at selectively reproducing one of two recently viewed velocities. However, other influences, such as past history, also affected predictive smooth eye movements.