Saccadic eye movements in psychotic patients.

Schizophrenic and manic-depressive patients executed saccades to target displacements of 2 to 24 degrees. The latencies, velocities, and accuracy of their saccadic eye movements were normal, although patients' saccadic latencies increased more than controls' for stimulus displacements greater than 10 degrees. In contrast to their normal saccadic latencies, patients had significantly slower than normal mean finger-press latencies. The results have implications for the significance of motoric and attentional deficits in the major psychoses.