ASA 129th Meeting - Washington, DC - 1995 May 30 .. Jun 06

2pPP51. The role of auditory cues in assisting pursuit motor functions.

Renato G. Villacorte

David R. Perrott

Debra L. Ferguson

Psychoacoust. Lab., California State Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90032

Eight experienced subjects were used in a two-alternative, forced-choice visual search paradigm in order to investigate the auditory system's contribution in maintaining pursuit eye movements after the cue that indicated the target's location, velocity, and direction of travel was removed. Subjects were instructed to use the target motion information provided by the cue to anticipate the location of the target onset after the delay following the cue's offset. Predictably, conditions that included visual target information produced faster RT's than a cue consisting of only auditory information. Performance also declined when the velocity of the target or the duration of the delay was increased. These results may suggest the importance of information retention in maintaining pursuit tasks when target information is removed. The importance of the auditory system in processing spatial information for pursuit movement tasks will be discussed. [Work supported by NSF.]