T.S. Constantinidis1, N. Smyrnis1, I. Evdokimidis2, E. Kattoulas1, D. Avramopoulos1, N.C. Stefanis1, C.N. Stefanis1
1University Mental Health Research Institute. Vas. Sofias 72-74,
GR-11528, Athens, Greece (e-mail:iumhri@compulink.gr);
2Neurology Clinic of Athens National University,
Aeginitio Hospital, Vas. Sofias 72-74, GR-11528, Athens, Greece
These results are part of a large perspective study on vulnerability factors related to schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. In the experimental design of this large study that included testing of cognitive, oculomotor and psychometric batteries on a large population of healthy subjects recruited from the Greek airforce we included the study of an anti-saccade paradigm. In this preliminary report we present data on the analysis of anti-saccade performance in a sample of 200 individuals. We used the well known antisaccade eye movement paradigm. The eye movements were measured with an IRIS SKALAR device (sampling rate 600 Hz, monocular sampling). We analysed the error rate and the Response Latencies for each individual separately.
Latencies: The mean response latency for correct anti-saccades was 274.96 ms (SD = 46.49) and 204.52 ms (SD = 42.62) for error saccades (p < 0.0001). The mean response latency for the corrective saccades in error trials was 157.52 ms (SD = 61.84).
Errors (DF): The mean DF for the population was 0.76 (SD = 0.17). The lowest 5% of subjects had a DF below 0.42 forming a subset of bad performers.
Correlation: The correlation of DF with the age, the level of education (measured in years of education) and the laterality indices were not significant on the contrary the DF was positively correlated with the IQ as measured with the Raven's Progressive Matrices test (R = 0.18, t = 2.83, p < 0.01).