title: Are microsaccades responsible for the gap effect?
abstract: Extinguishing a fixation point shortly before, or concurrently with, the onset of a peripheral visual target reduces the latency of saccades to that target. Saslow (1967) hypothesized that this gap effect might occur because fixation point offsets reduce the incidence of corrective microsaccades with an associated saccadic refractory period. In the present study, a robust gap effect was obtained. However, using a Purkinje image eyetracker with 1 arcmin of resolution, we found that fixation point offsets had no effect on the occurrence of microsaccades and that the occurrence of microsaccades had no impact on the magnitude of gap effect. Microsaccades therefore do not appear to play any part in the production of the gap effect.
authors.affiliation: University of Alberta, Department of Psychology, Edmonton, Canada.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kingstone
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Fendrich
authors.forename: C M
authors.initials: CM
authors.lastname: Wessinger
authors.forename: P A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Reuter-Lorenz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005403:Fixation, Ocular; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D012438:Saccades