One can choose one’s own saccadic reaction times

Saccade latencies are conventionally viewed as reflecting the accumulation of information underlying decision-making processes. However, we have previously shown that latency distributions may be strongly affected by reinforcement contingencies (Madelain et al., 2007). Here we further probe whether one can control one’s own reaction times.

In a first series of experiments, participants had to choose between “short” and “long” saccadic latencies (80-300ms range) in a set of concurrent interval schedules. The relative proportions of latencies matched the relative proportions of reinforcers earned