Anti-saccades away from faces: evidence for an influence of high-level visual processes on saccade programming

The anti-saccade task is an important tool for investigating both the generation of voluntary saccades and the suppression of involuntary, stimulus driven, saccades. In the anti-saccade task participants have to suppress an involuntary saccade to the stimulus in order to generate a voluntary saccade away from the stimulus. The extent to which errors occur in this task indicates the ability of the stimulus to trigger an orienting response that is beyond the control of the participant. Here we show an increase in anti-saccade error rates away from an upright face compared to a non-upright face. This suggests that complex high-level visual properties of the stimulus can influence whether involuntary orienting occurs.