The Stochastic Early Reaction, Inhibition, and late Action (SERIA) model for antisaccades

The antisaccade task is a classic paradigm used to study the voluntary control of eye movements. It requires participants to suppress a reactive eye movement to a visual target and to concurrently initiate a saccade in the opposite direction. Although several models have been proposed to explain error rates and reaction times in this task, no formal model comparison has yet been performed. Here, we describe a Bayesian modeling approach to the antisaccade task that allows us to formally compare different models on the basis of their evidence. First, we provide a formal likelihood function of actions (pro- and antisaccades) and reaction times based on previously published models. Second, we introduce the Stochastic Early Reaction, Inhibition, and late Action model (SERIA), a novel model postulating two different mechanisms that interact in the antisaccade task: an early GO/NO-GO race decision process and a late GO/GO decision process. Third, we apply these models to a data set from an experiment with three mixed blocks of pro- and antisaccade trials. Bayesian model comparison demonstrates that the SERIA model explains the data better than competing models that do not incorporate a late decision process. Moreover, we show that the early decision process postulated by the SERIA model is, to a large extent, insensitive to the cue presented in a single trial. Finally, we use parameter estimates to demonstrate that changes in reaction time and error rate due to the probability of a trial type (pro- or antisaccade) are best explained by faster or slower inhibition and the probability of generating late voluntary prosaccades.Author summary: One widely replicated finding in schizophrenia research is that patients tend to make more errors than healthy controls in the antisaccade task, a psychometric paradigm in which participants are required to look in the opposite direction of a visual cue. This deficit has been suggested to be an endophenotype of schizophrenia, as first order relatives of patients tend to show similar but milder deficits. Currently, most models applied to experimental findings in this task are limited to fit average reaction times and error rates. Here, we propose a novel statistical model that fits experimental data from the antisaccade task, beyond summary statistics. The model is inspired by the hypothesis that antisaccades are the result of several competing decision processes that interact nonlinearly with each other. In applying this model to a relatively large experimental data set, we show that mean reaction times and error rates do not fully reflect the complexity of the processes that are likely to underlie experimental findings. In the future, our model could help to understand the nature of the deficits observed in schizophrenia by providing a statistical tool to study their biological underpinnings.