Tp. Zahn et al., MANUAL AND SACCADIC REACTION-TIME WITH CONSTANT AND VARIABLE PREPARATORY INTERVALS IN SCHIZOPHRENIA, Journal of abnormal psychology, 107(2), 1998, pp. 328-337
Saccadic reaction time (RT) has been shown to be unimpaired in schizop
hrenia. Could this be due to its not requiring controlled information
processing? The authors gave 49 schizophrenia patients and 34 controls
manual and saccadic RT tasks with preparatory intervals of 1, 3, and
5 s given in regular and irregular sequences. If saccades require main
ly automatic processes, they should not be affected by variations in t
he preparatory interval that are mediated by controlled processing. Th
e manual task showed typical slower RT and larger preparatory interval
effects in patients than in controls. Although the saccadic task show
ed significant effects of both the preparatory interval and the prepar
atory interval on the preceding trial similar in kind to those in manu
al RT, there were no group differences in these or in RT. The results
are attributed to greater stimulus-response compatibility in the sacca
dic task, which puts fewer demands on working memory.