Abstract: The saccadic eye movement system provides an important instrument to explore the cognitive control of behavior. Some studies found that many cognitive processes influenced saccade parameters. This paper introduced and reviewed the experimental paradigm and cognitive function of saccadic eye movement following four aspects. Firstly, cognitive factors in visually guided saccades include gap/overlap effects, effects of cueing, effects of distractors and learning. Secondly, cognitive factors in predictive saccades contain the theory of a neural clock, visual working memory, and instruction. Thirdly, cognitive factors in memory guided saccades include effects of distractors, inhibitory effect of spatial working memory, attention and so on. Fourthly, cognitive factors in antisaccades include inhibition of antisaccade, competitive integration of two saccadic decision signals, working memory capacity, attention, error monitoring, learning effects, and the effects of incentive. Finally, it put forward to a direction for future research and some questions that need to be resolved.

Key words: prosaccades, predictive saccade, memory guided saccade, antisaccade, cognitive function