The influence of attending to multiple locations on eye movements

The present paper reports results of a dual task study in which two locations were endogenously cued as possible target locations, while only one eye movement had to be executed. During the cue period, letters were briefly presented at the saccade goals and at no-saccade goals. Results show that performance was better for letters presented at any of the saccade goals than for letters presented at the no-saccade locations. Furthermore saccades deviated away from the non-saccaded target location, suggesting inhibition of the location to which the eyes should not go. The results indicate that the premotor theory also holds for conditions in which attention is allocated to multiple locations.