Dataset for: Using individual differences to understand saccade-pursuit interactions

Due to the foveal organization of our visual system, eye movements are an essential part of perception and are studied across a wide range of different research areas. Across all areas typically only saccadic or only pursuit eye movements are measured in different tasks and behavior is averaged across observers. In this study we want to use interindividual variability to understand the naturally occurring saccade-pursuit interactions. A large group of participants will perform a set of standard oculometric (saccade and pursuit) and psychometric measurements with different relevant sensory information (position and velocity). We will correlate these basic measurements across observers with differences in saccade-pursuit interactions to understand which factors drive behavioral differences. We want to test whether interindividual difference vary across different eye movements or across different relevant sensory information to gain insight into the structure of the oculomotor system.

Research on saccadic and pursuit eye movements already made great contributions to our understanding of sensory processing and human behavior. However, studies often have focused on average behavior of only one specific type of eye movement in a specific task. By leveraging individual differences of 50 observers across a unique combination of different tasks, we demonstrate that critical links and variations in the control of oculomotor behavior are missed by focusing on average behavior across participants of isolated eye movements. We observed that saccade and pursuit behavior across tasks are correlated, but only when tested with matched sensory information: accuracy of saccades to moving targets is correlated with pursuit gain, but not accuracy of saccades to stationary targets. Within the same task, the coordination of saccadic and pursuit eye movements is tailored to the strengths of the individual: observers with more accurate saccades to moving targets use them more frequently to catch-up with moving targets. Our findings demonstrate that individual variations in sensorimotor behavior are more than just measurement noise and questions previous results and interpretations based on the comparison of saccadic and pursuit eye movements with different sensory input.