Saccade latency towards auditory targets

The latency of saccades, defined as the interval between target presentation and the beginning of eye movement, reflects the time required for the execution of a number of central processes. Several studies have been carried out to investigate the influence of psychophysiological factors on saccade latency, but little attention has been devoted to the reciprocal interaction between the initial eye position in the orbit and target position in space. In order to further investigate these aspects, we have examined saccadic responses evoked by the presentation of visual and auditory targets in the random stimulation protocol. The position of the reference target was changed from trial to trial in order to obtain different initial positions of the eyes in the orbit. In the case of auditory target presentation, saccade latency was found to decrease with the eccentricity of the target with respect to the initial position of the eyes in the orbit. © 1995 Elsevier B.V.