Error-processing of oculomotor capture

Previous research has shown that salient events have a powerful effect on our covert (attentional capture) and overt (oculomotor capture) behavior. The goal of the present study was to examine whether oculomotor capture errors, which are purely stimulus-driven, meaning that they are not in any way defined by the task-set, elicit the error-related negativity (ERN). Using a hybrid of antisaccade and oculomotor capture tasks, we showed that erroneous prosaccades and irrelevant onset capture errors elicited the ERN of similar amplitude. The results suggest that participants adopted an internal standard for a direct eye movement to the target (optimal performance) and any eye movement that deviated from this path was detected by a performance-monitoring system and indexed by the error-related negativity. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.