Countermanding saccades in children
- 1School of Psychology, Sports Science and Wellbeing, College of Health and Science, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, LN6 7TS UK
- 2School of Health, Wellbeing and Social Sciences, Plymouth Marjon University, Plymouth, PL6 8BH UK
Abstract
The countermanding saccade task is a widely used test of reactive inhibitory oculomotor control. The test comprises “Go” trials, in which saccades are directed towards target onsets, interspersed with “Stop” trials, where a signal sometime after target onset indicates that a saccade should be withheld or “countermanded”. Computational models of the task assume a race to threshold between internal go and stop processes, the outcome of which determines whether a programmed response is cancelled. In this study, 181 typically developing primary-school-aged children completed child-friendly versions of the task. Three experiments examined the effect of task instruction (either to countermand saccades or ignore stop signals), stop signal characteristics (with and without an overlapping fixation cue) and practice (one versus two blocks). Children often failed to make saccades even when they were instructed to ignore the signal and make a response to the target on every trial. Saccade reaction times were longer on Stop compared with correct Go trials and significant “dips” (reductions in expected response frequency within discrete time bins) were observed in reaction time distributions associated with the change in the colour of the fixation stimulus that served as a stop signal. It is concluded that visual stop signals exert an exogenous inhibitory effect on saccades which decreases with increasing age. As such, care should be taken in interpreting the oculomotor stop signal task as a straightforward test of developing inhibitory control or the maturation of an internal stop process.
Open access statement: Experiment task code, raw trial-level data, and analysis files for all experiments are available via the Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4PGH. The study protocol was not preregistered.
Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-026-03342-4.
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BibTeX
@article{hodgson2026countermanding,
title = {{Countermanding saccades in children}},
author = {Timothy L. Hodgson and Jonathan Waddington and Kirsten Williams and Kun Guo},
journal = {Attention, Perception \& Psychophysics},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3758/s13414-026-03342-4},
url = {https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-026-03342-4},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Countermanding saccades in children
AU - Timothy L. Hodgson
AU - Jonathan Waddington
AU - Kirsten Williams
AU - Kun Guo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
JO - Attention, Perception & Psychophysics
DO - 10.3758/s13414-026-03342-4
UR - https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-026-03342-4
AB - The countermanding saccade task is a widely used test of reactive inhibitory oculomotor control. The test comprises “Go” trials, in which saccades are directed towards target onsets, interspersed with “Stop” trials, where a signal sometime after target onset indicates that a saccade should be withheld or “countermanded”. Computational models of the task assume a race to threshold between internal go and stop processes, the outcome of which determines whether a programmed response is cancelled. In this study, 181 typically developing primary-school-aged children completed child-friendly versions of the task. Three experiments examined the effect of task instruction (either to countermand saccades or ignore stop signals), stop signal characteristics (with and without an overlapping fixation cue) and practice (one versus two blocks). Children often failed to make saccades even when they were instructed to ignore the signal and make a response to the target on every trial. Saccade reaction times were longer on Stop compared with correct Go trials and significant “dips” (reductions in expected response frequency within discrete time bins) were observed in reaction time distributions associated with the change in the colour of the fixation stimulus that served as a stop signal. It is concluded that visual stop signals exert an exogenous inhibitory effect on saccades which decreases with increasing age. As such, care should be taken in interpreting the oculomotor stop signal task as a straightforward test of developing inhibitory control or the maturation of an internal stop process. Open access statement: Experiment task code, raw trial-level data, and analysis files for all experiments are available via the Open Science Framework: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/Q4PGH. The study protocol was not preregistered. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-026-03342-4.
SN - 1943-3921
SN - 1943-393X
ER -