Serial Dependence in Smooth Pursuit Eye Movements of Preadolescent Children and Adults

Serial dependence refers to the attraction of current perceptual responses toward previously seen stimuli. Despite extensive research on serial dependence, fundamental questions, such as how serial dependence changes with development, whether it affects the perception of sensory input, and what qualifies as serial dependence, remain unresolved. The current study aims to address these questions.

We tested 81 children (8-9 years) and 77 adults (18-30 years) with an ocular tracking task in which participants used their eyes to track a target moving in a specific direction on each trial. This task examined both the open-loop (pursuit initiation) and closed-loop (steady-state tracking) smooth pursuit eye movements.

We found an attractive bias in pursuit direction toward previously seen target motion direction during pursuit initiation but not sustained pursuit in both children and adults. Such a bias displayed both feature- and temporal-tuning characteristics of serial dependence, showed oblique-cardinal directional anisotropy, and was more pronounced in children than adults. The greater effect of serial dependence around oblique than cardinal directions and its increased magnitude in children compared to adults can be explained by the larger variability in pursuit direction around oblique directions and in children, as predicted by the Bayesian framework.

Serial dependence in smooth pursuit occurs early during pursuit initiation when the response is driven by the perception of sensory input. Age-related changes in serial dependence reflect the fine-tuning of general brain functions, enhancing precision in tracking a moving target and thus reducing serial dependence effects.