Effects of spatial cueing on overt orienting of gaze to attentive stimuli

The latency of visually guided saccades executed after acueing condition was adopted as amoreeco logical index to explore how spatia lattention , usually assessed by manual responses, operates in the visual field . Subjects executed saccades a imed towards one of 4 possible position s,equally distributed a round a central fix action cross. Before the on set of the saccadic target, a visual cuew as briefly presented at th e sam eorata different spatial location . The visual cuew as non -predictive of the target position . Two experimental sessions wer e carried out, differin g for the on set a synchrony between cue and target. A time-dependent coupling between the task -irrelevant location of th e cue and the direction of a follow in g over t shift of attention emerged . Clinical applications of the adopted experimental setting to neurological and psychiatric patients with motor impairments are discussed.