The HED Task Catalog is under development. IDs are not stable until formal release. Comments are welcome at github.com/hed-standard/hed-task/issues.

Anti-Saccade Task

HED task ID: hedtsk_anti_saccade

Family: Response inhibition and stopping tasks

Also known as: AST, Antisaccade, Anti-Saccade

Participants must suppress a prepotent saccade toward a peripheral cue and generate a voluntary saccade to the opposite location; errors and saccade latency index oculomotor inhibition.

Description

The Anti-Saccade Task measures voluntary control over reflexive eye movements. Participants fixate centrally while a peripheral stimulus suddenly appears in the left or right visual field. Instead of looking toward the stimulus (the reflexive prosaccade), participants must look in the opposite direction (antisaccade). This requires inhibiting the automatic orienting response and generating a volitional saccade. Performance is measured by antisaccade accuracy, latency, and the rate of prosaccadic intrusions (errors). The task indexes voluntary oculomotor control and prefrontal inhibitory function.

Inclusion test

An experiment is an instance of this task when its procedure matches, it manipulates at least one of the listed variables, and it records at least one of the listed measures.

Procedure

A peripheral cue appears; participants must suppress the reflexive saccade toward it and instead generate a voluntary saccade to the mirror-opposite location.

Manipulation

Prosaccade vs. antisaccade blocks or interleaved trials; cue eccentricity; gap vs. overlap conditions.

Measurement

Saccade direction errors (% erroneous prosaccades on antisaccade trials); saccade latency; corrective saccade latency.

Variations

Named versions that change what the participant experiences or does. The identifier of a variation is hedvar_<task>__<variation>.

Variation

Description

Justification

Standard Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__standard_anti_saccade

Look away from peripheral cue to mirror-image location.

Canonical paradigm: participant inhibits reflexive saccade and redirects gaze to mirror location

Prosaccade (Control Condition)

hedvar_anti_saccade__prosaccade_control_condition

Look toward peripheral cue; establishes baseline oculomotor performance.

Opposite stimulus-response mapping (look toward cue); different response requirement from anti-saccade

Interleaved Pro/Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__interleaved_pro_anti_saccade

Random mixing of pro- and anti-saccade trials; increases executive demands.

Mixed trial types require on-trial task-set switching; distinct from blocked presentation

Blocked Pro/Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__blocked_pro_anti_saccade

Separate blocks for each task type; lower executive demand.

Separate blocks of pro- and anti-saccade trials; different cognitive context from interleaved

Gap vs. Overlap Conditions

hedvar_anti_saccade__gap_vs_overlap_conditions

Fixation disappears before (gap) or remains during (overlap) cue; gap reduces saccade latency.

Fixation offset timing changes saccade initiation dynamics and error rates

Delayed Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__delayed_anti_saccade

Maintain fixation during delay after cue before generating antisaccade; increases memory/inhibition demands.

Memory-guided response after delay period; adds working memory component

Emotional Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__emotional_anti_saccade

Emotional faces as cues; measures emotion-driven capture of eye movements.

Emotional stimuli as saccade targets; retained per §5.1 (EMOT retired)

Memory-Guided Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__memory_guided_anti_saccade

Combine with spatial memory demands.

Target location must be retained in memory before response; distinct memory demand

Double-Step Anti-Saccade

hedvar_anti_saccade__double_step_anti_saccade

Target location shifts after initial saccade; tests online correction.

Two-step target displacement requires online motor reprogramming

Cognitive processes

This task is designed to engage the following processes:

Key references

  • Hallett, P. E. (1978). Primary and secondary saccades to goals defined by instructions. Vision Research, 18(11), 1279-1296. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Munoz, D. P., & Everling, S. (2004). Look away: The anti-saccade task and the voluntary control of eye movement. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5(3), 218-228. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Everling, S., & Fischer, B. (1998). The antisaccade: A review of basic research and clinical findings. Neuropsychologia, 36(9), 885-899. (DOI, PubMed)

Further references

  • Hutton, S. B., & Ettinger, U. (2006). The antisaccade task as a research tool in psychopathology: A critical review. Psychophysiology, 43(3), 302–313. [Updated: Amador, S. C., Hood, A. J., Schiess, M. C., Izor, R., & Sereno, A. B. (2006). Dissociating cognitive deficits involved in voluntary eye movement dysfunctions in Parkinson’s disease patients. Neuropsychologia, 44(8), 1475–1482.] (DOI, PubMed)

  • Antoniades, C. A., Ettinger, U., Gaymard, B., et al. (2013). An internationally standardised antisaccade protocol. Vision Research, 84, 1–5. (DOI, PubMed)

  • Crawford, T. J., Higham, S., Renvoize, T., Patel, J., Dale, M., Surber, A., & Smeeton, R. (2005). Inhibitory control of saccadic eye movements and cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s disease. Biological Psychiatry, 57(9), 1052–1060. [Updated context: Kaufman, L. D., Pratt, J., Levine, B., & Black, S. E. (2012). Executive deficits detected in mild Alzheimer’s disease patients using the antisaccade task. Brain and Behavior, 2(1), 15–21.] (DOI, PubMed)

  • Munoz, D. P., Armstrong, I. T., Hampton, K. A., & Moore, K. D. (2003). Altered control of visual fixation and saccadic eye movements in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Journal of Neurophysiology, 90(1), 503–514. [Updated: Wiecki, T. V., Antoniades, C. A., Golla, A., et al. (2016). A computational cognitive biomarker for early-stage Huntington’s disease. PLoS ONE, 11(2), e0148409.] (DOI, PubMed)