Saccadic eye movements are usually reflexive, and it requires effort to inhibit an eye movement to a object that captures attention in the periphery of vision. In this talk, I describe two oculomotor paradigms that measure inhibition of eye movements: the antisaccade and the oculomotor capture tasks.

The two tasks vary in the extent to which inhibition of an eye movement is intentional. Performance by older adults on the tasks correlated when inhibition was intentional, with a subset of adults older than 70 years performing relatively poorly on both tasks. These data indicate that some older adults have difficulty inhibiting reflexive saccades, possibly indicative of a change in some aspects of cognition..

Alison developed an interest in research into eye movements when she collaborated in a study of smooth pursuit eye movements in schizophrenia at the University of Tasmania.

Since her employment at Southern Cross University, her research has extended to factors affecting the control of saccadic eye movements, including pharmacological (nicotine and caffeine) and ageing. She has recently published two articles in these areas, with the most recent describing the relationship between neuropsychological tests and eye movement control in older adults.

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