[The visual information processing in generating saccades through the selection of the peripheral stimulus]

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the preattentive process contributes to generating saccades to the peripheral target in an unstructured background. The target and the non-target stimuli were presented simultaneously on the opposite sides at 10 deg. of eccentricity. Subjects were instructed to fixate on the target with the first saccade after the presentation of the test stimuli. The first saccade latency was measured with the EOG-technique. The target and the non-target patterns were different in textons and/or forms i.e., 1) in textons (the t-condition), 2) in forms (the f-condition), and 3) in textons and in forms (the tf-condition). While the textons are processed in th preattentive mode, the form is processed in the focal attentive mode. The mean saccade latencies in the t and the tf conditions did not differ significantly. The both were significantly shorter than those in the f condition. The number of the first error-saccades to the non-target was significantly larger in the f than the t and tf conditions. The study demonstrated that the preattentive process contributes to generating saccades to the peripheral target in an unstructured background.