Saccadic Curvature in the Presence of Emotional and Non-Emotional Distractors

Deviations in the saccade trajectory represent a promising dynamic measure for cognitive processes. These deviations could be caused by using the distractor stimuli appearing during the saccade initiation. Several recent studies explored specific distractor features that make saccades curve towards or away from distractor stimuli. They have shown that this deviation is affected not only by visual saliency but also by semantic information. However, the majority of previous studies has focused only on the images, such as violence scenes or frightening faces. The general purpose of this study was to reveal whether linguistic information, such as word meaning, could affect the saccade trajectory. In particular, the present study has not just explored the possible effect of high-level semantic information on saccade deviations but also has focused on the differences in the stimulus onset asynchrony.