AntiSaccade Task

Background

The Antisaccade Task is a cognitive-behavioral measure of executive control and attention that leverages people's automatic tendency to look towards a flashing stimuli ("prosaccade") while intentionally looking in the opposite direction ("antisaccade") costs significant mental effort.

The task was originally introduced by Peter Hallet in 1978 who set out to show that the brain's eye-movement mechanisms are flexible enough to obey voluntary, instruction-based commands that conflict with this automatic behavior. He found that "anti-tasks" resulted in significantly longer delays and highly inaccurate initial eye movements but also resulted in secondary eye movement corrections towards the 'anti-side' that were not directed by any visual feedback on the opposite side (as there was none). Thus, he concluded that while the brain's automatic tendency is to look towards stimulation, it is not restricted by it and can be influenced, e.g. with instruction-based commands, to look elsewhere.

Researchers Daniel Guitton and colleagues publish a landmark study in 1985 applying Hallett's task to patients who had undergone surgery on their frontoparietal networks. They discovered that patients with damage specifically to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) struggled immensely with the task. This established the Antisaccade task as a valid clinical tool for measuring prefrontal lobe function.

The Antisaccade Task is traditionally run with eye tracking, such as was done in the 1995 study by Anne Sereno and Philip Holzman on the relationship of smooth eyetracking and antisaccade behavior in patients suffering from schizophrenia. Other researchers, like Naomi Friedman and colleagues in their twin study on executive function study from 2008, use a simple reaction-time only Antisaccade Task as a measure for executive control.

Task Procedure

The Millisecond eye tracking Antisaccade Test is based on the Sereno & Holzman (1995) description of the procedure. Pro- and Antisaccade trials are run in a blocked design. The order of the two instruction conditions is counterbalanced by groupnumber assignment. In each condition, participants are first asked to focus on a fixation cross. After a minimum duration of 800ms, and if eyes are focused on the fixation cross, a red circle appears on the left or the right side of the fixation cross for 2500ms. The location of the red circle is randomly determined with 50% of trials presenting the red circle to the left of the fixation cross.

In the 'Pro Saccade' condition, participants are asked to look at the red circle immediately. In the 'Anti Saccade' condition, participants are asked to look to the opposite side of the red circle immediately. Trials terminate if participants make the correct movement within 2500ms. If participants take too long, the trial is counted as an error trial and is repeated. In each condition, participants work on 40 trials each. In between trials, a blank screen is presented for 500ms.

A practice block of 20 trials with error feedback precedes each test block.

What it Measures

The Antisaccade Task is a measure of executive control and attention

Psychological domains

• Cognitive Control: Ability to quickly adapt one's thoughts and behavior to current demands
• Inhibitory Control / Response Inhibition: Ability to override automatic responses that interfere with one's goals
• Cognitive Flexibility: Ability to quickly change between different task demands

Main Performance Metrics

• Accuracy Measure of Performance Decrement (PD): Difference in error rates of (Antisaccade - Saccade) Trials
• Response Time Measure of Performance Decrement (PD): Difference in median correct latency (in ms) of (Antisaccade - Saccade) Trials

Psychiatric Conditions

The Antisaccade Task has been used extensively with the following patient groups:

• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Parkinson’s Disease (PD)
• Schizophrenia

Test Variations

References

Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit AntiSaccade Task.

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Sereno, A.B. & Holzman, P.S. (1995). Antisaccades and Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements in Schizophrenia. BIOL PSYCHIATRY, 37, 394-401.

Everling, & Fischer. (1998). The antisaccade: A review of basic research and clinical studies. Neuropsychologia, 36(9), 885-899.

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

Friedman, N. P., Miyake, A., Young, S. E., DeFries, J. C., Corley, R. P., & Hewitt, J. K. (2008). Individual differences in executive functions are almost entirely genetic in origin. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 201–225.