The unidirectional prosaccade switch-cost: electroencephalographic evidence of task-set inertia in oculomotor control.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Laboratory within-subject experimental study in humans with concurrent electrophysiological recording.
PubMed 25453741 · doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2014.10.012
What was done
Participants completed an oculomotor task pseudo-randomly alternating between prosaccades and antisaccades while concurrent electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. The study measured saccadic reaction times and task-instruction-locked P3 event-related brain potential (ERP) amplitudes to test the task-set inertia hypothesis of unidirectional prosaccade switch-costs.
What was found
The abstract reports qualitative directions of effects without numerical values, error metrics, or statistical test statistics. Executing an antisaccade selectively increased the reaction time of a subsequent prosaccade, whereas switching from a prosaccade to an antisaccade did not influence reaction time. In ERP analyses, switching from a prosaccade to an antisaccade produced a reliable shift in P3 amplitude, but switching from an antisaccade to a prosaccade produced no reliable P3 change, with prosaccades retaining a P3 amplitude comparable to antisaccades.
Why it matters
These findings provide electrophysiological support for the task-set inertia hypothesis, demonstrating that the delay in prosaccade generation after an antisaccade is associated with persistent neural activation of the preceding non-standard task-set.
Limits
The abstract does not report the sample size (n), participant demographics, effect sizes, or exact numerical values. As a laboratory experiment measuring healthy individuals under artificial cueing conditions, ecological validity and applicability to clinical populations with executive dysfunction remain unassessed.