Abstract

Pointing with the eyes or the finger occurs frequently in social interaction to indicate
direction of attention and one's intentions. Research with a voluntary saccade task (where saccade
direction is instructed by the colour of a fixation point) suggested that gaze cues automatically
activate the oculomotor system, but non-biological cues, like arrows, do not. However, other work
has failed to support the claim that gaze cues are special. In the current research we introduced
biological and non-biological cues into the anti-saccade task, using a range of stimulus onset
asynchronies (SOAs). The anti-saccade task recruits both top ^ down and bottom^ up attentional
mechanisms, as occurs in naturalistic saccadic behaviour. In experiment 1 gaze, but not arrows,
facilitated saccadic reaction times (SRTs) in the opposite direction to the cues over all SOAs,
whereas in experiment 2 directional word cues had no effect on saccades. In experiment 3 finger
pointing cues caused reduced SRTs in the opposite direction to the cues at short SOAs. These
findings suggest that biological cues automatically recruit the oculomotor system whereas non-
biological cues do not. Furthermore, the anti-saccade task set appears to facilitate saccadic responses in the opposite direction to the cues.