Perceptual enhancement prior to intended and involuntary saccades

Prior to an eye movement, attention is gradually shifted toward the point where the saccade will land. Our goal was to better understand the allocation of attention in an oculomotor capture paradigm for saccades that go straight to the eye movement target and for saccades that go to a distractor and are followed by corrective saccades to the target (i.e., involuntary saccades). We also sought to test facilitation at the future retinotopic location of target and nontarget objects, with the principal aim of verifying whether the remapping process accounts for the retinal displacement caused by involuntary saccades. Two experiments were run employing a dual-task design, primarily requiring participants to perform saccades toward a target while discriminating an asymmetric cross presented briefly before saccade onset. The results clearly show perceptual facilitation at the target location for goal-directed saccades and at the distractor location when oculomotor capture occurred. Facilitation was observed at a location relating to the remapping of a future saccade landing point, in sequences of oculomotor capture. In contrast, performance remained unaffected at the remapped location of a salient distracting object, which was not looked at. The findings are taken as evidence that presaccadic enhancement occurs prior to involuntary and voluntary saccades alike and that the remapping process also indiscriminatingly accounts for the retinal displacement caused by either.