View article

The oculomotor system uses a sophisticated updating mechanism to adjust for large retinal displacements which occur with every saccade. Previous studies have shown that updating operates rapidly and starts before saccade is initiated. Here we used saccade adaptation to alter life-long expectations about how a saccade changes the location of an object on the retina. Participants made a sequence of one horizontal and one vertical saccade and ignored an irrelevant distractor. The time-course of oculomotor updating was estimated using saccade curvature of the vertical saccade, relative to the distractor. During the first saccade both saccade targets were shifted on 80% of trials, which induced saccade adaptation (Experiment 1). Critically, since the distractor was left stationary, successful saccade adaptation (e.g., saccade becoming shorter) meant that after the first saccade the distractor appeared in a different …