Saccades are ballistic eye movementsthat typically occur 3 to 4 times every second and are used to switch betweenfixation points. During the occurrence of a saccadic eye movement, visualprocessing is selectively blocked (saccadic suppression, saccadic masking).This results in the effect that the motion of the eye or the gap between twofixations are not noticed. An antisaccade is an eye movement in the oppositedirection of a stimulus. In a typical antisaccades task, participants mustinhibit an eye movement towards a occurring stimulus, and in contrast make asaccade in the opposite direction. There are two contrasting theories about how functioning on the antisaccade task is performed. In essence, one does not hold that there is a distinction between covert and overt attention while the other does (i.e., a shift if attention can take place shifting gaze). Both theories implicate the frontal eye fields and the superior colliculus, with both influencing the allocation attention according to one theory while in the other theory this function is assigned mainly to the FEF. The use of the adult antisaccade task with infants has been questioned with contention that for such a purpose both eye and head movLook away: theanti-saccade task and the voluntary control of eye movementements need to be recorded. The antisaccade task was originally devised by Munoz and Everling (2004).
See Covert attention, Eye movements, Frontal eye fields (FEF), Overt attention, Superior colliculus