Eye-Tracking Performance and Engagement of Attention

Eye tracking dysfunction in schizophrenia: Characterization of component eye movement abnormalities, diagnostic specificity, and the role of attention.

“…The observation of attention facilitation of eye tracking performance replicates previous findings (Cegalis & Sweeney, 1981; Holzman et al, 1976; Shagass et al, 1976) and extends this work by clarifying the specific aspects of oculomotor function enhanced by attention facilitation. Attention facilitation markedly reduced the size of catch-up saccades without affecting catch-up saccade number and also reduced anticipatory saccade frequency and improved global tracking performance.…”

“…The large benefits of attention facilitation on eye tracking were similar in the control and patient groups, as reported previously by Shagass et al (1976). This suggests that a disturbance in the aspects of attention that are enhanced by silent number reading may not be the primary cause of visual tracking impairments in psychotic disorders.…”

The coordinate system of endogenous spatial attention during smooth pursuit

“…Our finding of no difference in pursuit gain between the conditions questions this interpretation. Previous findings showed that pursuit is improved when performing a task on the pursued object (Shagass, Roemer, & Amadeo, 1976;Sweeney, Clementz, Haas, Escobar, Drake, & Frances, 1994;Vangelder, Lebedev, Liu, & Tsui, 1995). Consistently, it could have been suggested that if there were a strong attentional link between the pursued stimulus and the retinotopic target, we would find enhanced pursuit gain when attending the retinotopic target, relative to the spatiotopic one.…”

Eye Tracking Dysfunction and Schizophrenia: A Critical Perspective

“…Evidence indicating stability of performance can also be obtained from data on patients who are not acutely ill. ETD occurs in patients with remitted schizophrenia (Iacono et al 1982; Keefe et al 1989; Altman et al 1990; Campion et al 1992) and in samples including schizophrenia inpatients and outpatients (Lipton et al 1980b; Latham et al 1981; Matsue and Okuma 1981; Yee et al 1987; Keefe et al 1989; Kelly et al 1990; Grove et al 1991; Klein and Andresen 1991). Readers interested in the stability of specific dependent measures are referred to the following studies: Holzman et al (1974), Shagass et al (1974), Cegalis and Sweeney (1979), Iacono and Lykken (1979 a , 1979 b , 1981), Iacono et al (1981), Bartfai et al (1983), Siever et al (1986), Smeraldi et al (1987), van den Bosch and Rozendaal (1988), and Campion et al (1992). We concur with the conclusion of Clementz and Sweeney (1990) that the stability of global measures of eye tracking tends to be quite good, at least for periods of up to 2 years.…”