Input monitoring and response selection as components of executive control in pro-saccades and anti-saccades

Abstract

Several studies have shown that antisaccades, more than prosaccades, are executed under executive control. It is argued that executive control subsumes a variety of controlled processes. The present study tested whether some of these underlying processes are involved in the execution of antisaccades. An experiment is reported in which two such processes were parametrically varied, namely input monitoring and response selection. This resulted in four selective interference conditions obtained by factorially combining the degree of input monitoring and the presence of response selection in the interference task. The four tasks were combined with a primary task which required the participants to perform either prosaccades or antisaccades. By comparison of performance in these dual-task conditions and performance in singletask control conditions, it was shown that antisaccades, but not prosaccades, were delayed when the secondary task required input monitoring or response selection. The results are discussed with respect to theoretical attempts to fractionate the concept of executive control.

Declarative and Procedural Working Memory: Common Principles, Common Capacity Limits?

“…executive processes are involved only at an earlier point, in constructing the task set or in choosing one to be retrieved from long-term memory. Thus, my conceptualization of executive functions differs in one respect from that of Vandierendonck and colleagues (Szmalec et al, 2005;Vandierendonck, Deschuyteneer et al, 2008) because I regard response selection as a basic process, not an executive process.…”

“…Inspired by the work of baddeley (1986), the processing side of working memory is often conceptualized as a "central executive" or, more recently, as a bunch of executive processes. However, as Vandierendonck, Deschuyteneer, Depoorter, and Drieghe (2008) have noted, the term "executive processes" remains vague, and no consensus has yet emerged on what belongs to the set of executive processes.…”

“…This line of research makes occasional references to a role of working memory in action control. For instance, Vandierendonck, Deschuyteneer, et al (2008) argued that executive control depends on maintaining a task set in working memory. a task set is the set of representations and parameter settings that determine selection, monitoring and control of actions in the service of a goal.…”

The role of saccades in multitasking: towards an output-related view of eye movements

“…In a similar design, Evens and Ludwig (2010) reported data on the simultaneous execution of antisaccades (i.e., saccades directed away from a transient in the periphery) during a perceptual task which involved the detection of a luminance change. Dual-task costs in terms of increased saccade RTs were observed, which were attributed to a general increase in the response criterion for saccade generation in dual-task conditions (see also Roberts, Hager, & Heron, 1994;Stuyven, Van der Goten, Vandierendonck, Claeys, & Crevits, 2000;Vandierendonck, Deschuyteneer, Depoorter, & Drieghe, 2008). Another study reported worse performance in a number processing task during the simultaneous execution of saccades (Irwin & Thomas, 2007).…”

Role of Working Memory in Task Switching

“…Such a conceptualisation has many drawbacks, not in the least that it is a homunculus (e.g., Baddeley, 1996). Several attempts have been made to fractionate the central executive, by looking into separate executive functions (e.g., Burgess, 1997;Miyake, Friedman, Emerson, Witzki, Howerter, & Wager, 2000), or by looking into even simpler executive control processes required to cope with task demands (e.g., Vandierendonck, Szmalec, Deschuyteneer, & Depoorter, 2007), such as input and output monitoring (e.g., Deschuyteneer & Vandierendonck, 2005a;Vandierendonck, Deschuyteneer, Depoorter, & Drieghe, 2008), response selection (e.g., Deschuyteneer & Vandierendonck, 2005b;Szmalec, Vandierendonck, & Kemps, 2005), memory updating (e.g., Kane, Conway, Miura, & Colflesh, 2007;Szmalec, Verbruggen, Vandierendonck, & Kemps, 2011), and inhibition (e.g., Friedman & Miyake, 2004;Verbruggen & Logan, 2008).…”