Are better eye movements an advantage in ball games? A study of prosaccadic and antisaccadic eye movements

The aim of this study was to compare prosaccadic and antisaccadic eye movem ents of experts in ball sports and controls. In the prosaccadic and antisac cadic task, subjects made saccades respectively towards and away from a sud denly appearing stimulus. By means of infrared-oculography,hy, we compared horizontal eye movements of experts (n=18) and controls (n=20). Experts had shorter overall saccadic latencies, but significantly shorter latencies oc curred only on the antisaccade task, not on the prosaccade task. Our findin gs seem to support the concept that prosaccades and antisaccades have diffe rent underlying mechanisms and that expertise in ball games mainly improves antisaccadic performance in terms of latency and variability.