The gap effect and express saccades in the auditory modality

Abstract

Latencies of eye movements to peripheral targets are reduced when there is a short delay (typically 200 ms) between the offset of a central visual fixation point and the target onset. This has been termed the gap effect. In addition, some subjects, usually with practice, exhibit a separate population of very short latency saccades, called express saccades. Both these phenomena have been attributed to disengagement of visual attention when the fixation point is extinguished. A competing theory of the gap effect attributes it to disengagement of oculomotor fixation during the temporal gap. It is known that auditory targets are effective in eliciting saccadic eye movements, and also that covert..