Developmental fractionation and differential discrimination of the anti-saccadic direction error

This partial re-analysis of the data of a total of 433 experimental sessions transfers the distinction of "express" and "regular" latency ranges from the pro-saccade task to the latencies of the anti-saccadic direction errors. Express errors and express saccades (ES) loaded on one and the same PCA factor, and both variables were subject to only minor developmental changes from childhood to young adulthood. Regular direction errors loaded, with opposite signs, on the same factor as pro-saccadic reaction times and were unrelated to express errors; these direction errors showed substantial developmental changes. Our data contribute with new evidence from the anti-saccade task to the long standing debate on whether ES should be considered as a separate type of saccade. Anti-saccadic direction errors with express latencies can be distinguished from those with regular latencies. Future anti-saccade task research should therefore analyse these error types separately in order to look for further evidence in favour of their conceptual and statistical distinction.