Most infant cognitive studies use visual fixation time as the measure of interest. There are, however, some serious methodological and theoretical concerns regarding what these studies reveal about infant cognition and how their results ought to be interpreted. We propose a Bayesian modeling framework which helps address these concerns. This framework allows us to more precisely formulate hypotheses about infants’ cognitive representations, formalize “linking hypotheses” that relate infants’ visual fixation behavior with stimulus complexity, and better determine (...) what questions a given experiment can and cannot answer. (shrink)

In a realistic steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) based brain-computer interface (BCI) application like driving a car or controlling a quadrotor, observing the surrounding environment while simultaneously gazing at the stimulus is necessary. This kind of application inevitably could cause head movements and variation of the accompanying gaze fixation point, which might affect the SSVEP and BCI’s performance. However, few papers studied the effects of head movements and gaze fixation switch on SSVEP response, and the corresponding BCI (...) performance. This study aimed to explore these effects by designing a new ball tracking paradigm in a virtual reality (VR) environment with two different moving tasks, i.e., the following and free moving tasks, and three moving patterns, pitch, yaw, and static. Sixteen subjects were recruited to conduct a BCI VR experiment. The offline data analysis showed that head moving patterns [F(2, 30) = 9.369, p = 0.001, effect size = 0.384] resulted in significantly different BCI decoding performance but the moving tasks had no effect on the results [F(1, 15) = 3.484, p = 0.082, effect size = 0.188]. Besides, the canonical correlation analysis (CCA) and filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA) accuracy were better than the PSDA and MEC methods in all of the conditions. These results implied that head movement could significantly affect the SSVEP performance but it was possible to switch gaze fixation to interact with the surroundings in a realistic BCI application. (shrink)

An important question about eye-movement behavior is when the decision is made to terminate a fixation and program the following saccade. Different approaches have found converging evidence in favor of a mixed-control account, in which there is some overlap between processing information at fixation and planning the following saccade. We examined one interesting instance of mixed control in visual search: lag-2 revisits, during which observers fixate a stimulus, move to a different stimulus, and then revisit the first (...) stimulus on the next fixation. Results show that the probability of lag-2 revisits occurring increased with the number of target-similar stimuli, and revisits were preceded by a brief fixation on the intervening distractor stimulus. We developed the Efficient Visual Sampling computational model to simulate our findings and to provide insight into mixed control of fixations and the perceptual, cognitive, and motor processes that produce lag-2 revisits. (shrink)

The topic of this paper is the complex interaction between attention, fixation, and one species of change blindness. The two main interpretations of the target phenomenon are the ‘blindness’ interpretation and the ‘inaccessibility’ interpretation. These correspond to the sparse view (Dennett 1991; Tye, 2007) and the rich view (Dretske 2007; Block, 2007a, 2007b) of visual consciousness respectively. Here I focus on the debate between Fred Dretske and Michael Tye. Section 1 describes the target phenomenon and the dialectics it (...) entails. Section 2 explains how attention and fixation weigh in these debates, and argues that Dretske’s hyper-rich view fails precisely because he overlooks certain effects of attention and fixation. Section 3 explains why Tye’s view is also unsatisfying, mainly because he misconceives the degree of access. Section 4 then puts forward the positive model covariance, which has it that the degree of cognitive access tracks the degree of phenomenology, and contrasts it with Block’s view on the Sperling iconic memory paradigm. The paper ends with a discussion of levels of seeing, which involve crowding, indexing, and other visual phenomena. Change ‘blindness’ is a set of phenomena that was discovered about two decades ago, yet an entirely satisfying understanding is still lacking. To move forward, a more detailed understanding of attention and fixation is called for. (shrink)

Background: Facial attractiveness influences our perceptions of others, with beautiful faces reaping societal rewards and anomalous faces encountering penalties. The purpose of this study was to determine associations of visual attention with bias and social dispositions toward people with facial anomalies. -/- Methods: Sixty subjects completed tests evaluating implicit bias, explicit bias, and social dispositions before viewing publicly available images of preoperative and postoperative patients with hemifacial microsomia. Eye-tracking was used to register visual fixations. -/- Results: Participants with (...) higher implicit bias scores fixated significantly less on the cheek and ear region preoperatively (P = 0.004). Participants with higher scores in empathic concern and perspective taking fixated more on the forehead and orbit preoperatively (P = 0.045) and nose and lips (P = 0.027) preoperativel. -/- Conclusions: Participants with higher levels of implicit bias spent less visual attention on anomalous facial anatomy, whereas participants with higher levels of empathic concern and perspective taking spent more visual attention on normal facial anatomy. Levels of bias and social dispositions such as empathy may predict layperson gaze patterns toward those with facial anomalies and provide insights to neural mechanisms underlying the "anomalous is bad" paradigm. (shrink)

Visual working memory is a construct hypothesized to store a small amount of accurate perceptual information that can be brought to bear on a task. Much research concerns the construct's capacity and the precision of the information stored. Two prominent theories of VWM representation have emerged: slot-based and continuous-resource mechanisms. Prior modeling work suggests that a continuous resource that varies over trials with variable capacity and a potential to make localization errors best accounts for the empirical data. Questions remain (...) regarding the variability in VWM capacity and precision. Using a novel eye-tracking paradigm, we demonstrate that VWM facilitates search and exhibits effects of fixation frequency and recency, particularly for prior targets. Whereas slot-based memory models cannot account for the human data, a novel continuous-resource model does capture the behavioral and eye tracking data, and identifies the relevant resource as item activation. (shrink)

Perceptual tasks such as object matching, mammogram interpretation, mental rotation, and satellite imagery change detection often require the assignment of correspondences to fuse information across views. We apply techniques developed for machine translation to the gaze data recorded from a complex perceptual matching task modeled after fingerprint examinations. The gaze data provide temporal sequences that the machine translation algorithm uses to estimate the subjects' assumptions of corresponding regions. Our results show that experts and novices have similar surface behavior, such as (...) the number of fixations made or the duration of fixations. However, the approach applied to data from experts is able to identify more corresponding areas between two prints. The fixations that are associated with clusters that map with high probability to corresponding locations on the other print are likely to have greater utility in a visual matching task. These techniques address a fundamental problem in eye tracking research with perceptual matching tasks: Given that the eyes always point somewhere, which fixations are the most informative and therefore are likely to be relevant for the comparison task? (shrink)

Despite the importance of effective observational analysis in the technical aspects of climbing performance, limited research informs this aspect of climbing coach education. Thus, the purpose of the present research was to explore cognitive-perceptual mechanisms underpinning visual search strategies of expert and novice climbing coaches through the novel combination of eye-tracking technology and retrospective think-aloud methodology. Analysis of gaze data revealed expert climbing coaches to demonstrate fewer fixations of greater duration, and fixate on distinctly different areas of the (...) class='Hi'>visual display, than their novice counterparts. Retrospective think-aloud interviews further demonstrated differences in the cognitive-perceptual mechanisms underpinning these visual search strategies, with expert coaches more cognisant of their visual search strategy. To expand, the gaze behaviour of expert climbing coaches was underpinned by hierarchical and complex knowledge structures relating to principles of climbing movement. This enabled expert coaches to actively focus on the most relevant aspects of a climber’s performance for analysis. Findings demonstrate the utility of combining eye tracking and retrospective think-aloud interviewing as a new, efficient methodology of capturing the cognitive-perceptual processes of climbing coaches to inform coaching education/strategies. (shrink)

Evidence from adult studies of deaf signers supports the dissociation between neural systems involved in processing visual linguistic and non-linguistic body actions. The question of how and when this specialization arises is poorly understood. Visual attention to these forms is likely to change with age and be affected by prior language experience. The present study used eye-tracking methodology with infants and children as they freely viewed alternating video sequences of lexical American sign language (ASL) signs and non-linguistic body (...) actions (self-directed grooming action and object-directed pantomime). In Experiment 1, we quantified fixation patterns using an area of interest (AOI) approach and calculated face preference index (FPI) values to assess the developmental differences between 6 and 11-month-old hearing infants. Both groups were from monolingual English-speaking homes with no prior exposure to sign language. Six-month-olds attended the signer’s face for grooming; but for mimes and signs, they were drawn to attend to the “articulatory space” where the hands and arms primarily fall. Eleven-month-olds, on the other hand, showed a similar attention to the face for all body action types. We interpret this to reflect an early visual language sensitivity that diminishes with age, just before the child’s first birthday. In Experiment 2, we contrasted 18 hearing monolingual English-speaking children (mean age of 4.8 years) vs. 13 hearing children of deaf adults (CODAs; mean age of 5.7 years) whose primary language at home was ASL. Native signing children had a significantly greater face attentional bias than non-signing children for ASL signs, but not for grooming and mimes. The differences in the visual attention patterns that are contingent on age (in infants) and language experience (in children) may be related to both linguistic specialization over time and the emerging awareness of communicative gestural acts. (shrink)

Eye-tracking studies have revealed a specific visual exploration style characterizing individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The aim of this study is to investigate the impact of stimulus type (static vs. dynamic) on visual exploration in children with ASD. Twenty-eight children with ASD, 28 children matched for developmental communication age and 28 children matched for chronological age watched a video and a series of photos involving the same joint attention scene. For each stimulus, Areas of Interest (AOI) were (...) determined based on Voronoi diagrams, which were defined around participants’ fixation densities, defined by the mean shift algorithm. To analyze the eye-tracking data on visual exploration, we used a method for creat-ing AOI a posteriori, based on participants’ actual fixations. The results showed the value of both kinds of stimuli. The photos allowed for the identification of more precise AOI, and show similarities in exploration between ASD and typical children. On the other hand, in video, among ASD children only, there are few differences in the way they look at the target depend-ing on the deictic cue used. This raises questions regarding their understanding of a joint atten-tion bid recorded on a video. Finally, whatever the stimulus, pointing seems to be the most im-portant element for children to look at the target. (shrink)

Eye movements during mental imagery are not epiphenomenal but assist the process of image generation. Commands to the eyes for each fixation are stored along with the visual representation and are used as spatial index in a motor‐based coordinate system for the proper arrangement of parts of an image. In two experiments, subjects viewed an irregular checkerboard or color pictures of fish and were subsequently asked to form mental images of these stimuli while keeping their eyes open. During (...) the perceptual phase, a group of subjects was requested to maintain fixation onto the screen's center, whereas another group was free to inspect the stimuli. During the imagery phase, all of these subjects were free to move their eyes. A third group of subjects (in Experiment 2) was free to explore the pattern but was requested to maintain central fixation during imagery. For subjects free to explore the pattern, the percentage of time spent fixating a specific location during perception was highly correlated with the time spent on the same (empty) locations during imagery. The order of scanning of these locations during imagery was correlated to the original order during perception. The strength of relatedness of these scanpaths and the vividness of each image predicted performance accuracy. Subjects who fixed their gaze centrally during perception did the same spontaneously during imagery. Subjects free to explore during perception, but maintaining central fixation during imagery, showed decreased ability to recall the pattern. We conclude that the eye scanpaths during visual imagery reenact those of perception of the same visual scene and that they play a functional role. (shrink)

We identify two aspects of the problem of maintaining perceptual stability despite an observer's eye movements. The first, visual direction constancy, is the (egocentric) stability of apparent positions of objects in the visual world relative to the perceiver. The second, visual position constancy, is the (exocentric) stability of positions of objects relative to each other. We analyze the constancy of visual direction despite saccadic eye movements.Three information sources have been proposed to enable the visual system (...) to achieve stability: the structure of the visual field, proprioceptive inflow, and a copy of neural efference or outflow to the extraocular muscles. None of these sources by itself provides adequate information to achieve visual direction constancy; present evidence indicates that all three are used.Our final question concerns how information processing operations result in a stable world. The three traditionally suggested means have been elimination, translation, or evaluation. All are rejected. From a review of the physiological and psychological evidence we conclude that no subtraction, compensation, or evaluation need take place. The problem for which these solutions were developed turns out to be a false one. We propose a “calibration” solution: correct spatiotopic positions are calculated anew for each fixation. Inflow, outflow, and retinal sources are used in this calculation: saccadic suppression of displacement bridges the errors between these sources and the actual extent of movement. (shrink)

Language is more than a source of information for accessing higher-order conceptual knowledge. Indeed, language may determine how people perceive and interpret visual stimuli. Visual processing in linguistic contexts, for instance, mirrors language processing and happens incrementally, rather than through variously-oriented fixations over a particular scene. The consequences of this atypical visual processing are yet to be determined. Here, we investigated the integration of visual and linguistic input during a reasoning task. Participants listened to sentences containing (...) conjunctions or disjunctions and looked at visual scenes containing two pictures that either matched or mismatched the nouns. Degree of match between nouns and pictures and between their expected and actual spatial positions affected fixations as well as judgments. We conclude that language induces incremental processing of visual scenes, which in turn becomes susceptible to reasoning errors during the language-meaning verification process. (shrink)

Joint attention has been extensively studied in the developmental literature because of overwhelming evidence that the ability to socially coordinate visual attention to an object is essential to healthy developmental outcomes, including language learning. The goal of this study was to understand the complex system of sensory-motor behaviors that may underlie the establishment of joint attention between parents and toddlers. In an experimental task, parents and toddlers played together with multiple toys. We objectively measured joint attention—and the sensory-motor behaviors (...) that underlie it—using a dual head-mounted eye-tracking system and frame-by-frame coding of manual actions. By tracking the momentary visual fixations and hand actions of each participant, we precisely determined just how often they fixated on the same object at the same time, the visual behaviors that preceded joint attention and manual behaviors that preceded and co-occurred with joint attention. We found that multiple sequential sensory-motor patterns lead to joint attention. In addition, there are developmental changes in this multi-pathway system evidenced as variations in strength among multiple routes. We propose that coordinated visual attention between parents and toddlers is primarily a sensory-motor behavior. Skill in achieving coordinated visual attention in social settings—like skills in other sensory-motor domains—emerges from multiple pathways to the same functional end. (shrink)

Understanding how people comprehend visual narratives (including picture stories, comics, and film) requires the combination of traditionally separate theories that span the initial sensory and perceptual processing of complex visual scenes, the perception of events over time, and comprehension of narratives. Existing piecemeal approaches fail to capture the interplay between these levels of processing. Here, we propose the Scene Perception & Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT), as applied to visual narratives, which distinguishes between front-end and back-end cognitive processes. (...) Front-end processes occur during single eye fixations and are comprised of attentional selection and information extraction. Back-end processes occur across multiple fixations and support the construction of event models, which reflect understanding of what is happening now in a narrative (stored in working memory) and over the course of the entire narrative (stored in long-term episodic memory). We describe relationships between front- and back-end processes, and medium-specific differences that likely produce variation in front-end and back-end processes across media (e.g., picture stories vs. film). We describe several novel research questions derived from SPECT that we have explored. By addressing these questions, we provide greater insight into how attention, information extraction, and event model processes are dynamically coordinated to perceive and understand complex naturalistic visual events in narratives and the real world. (shrink)

Marketers often use a visual line to divide the product information on an advertisement into left-right segments for aesthetic or categorization purposes. The present research examined the effect of the dividing line on the consumer memory. Across three studies, we showed that the presence of a dividing line enhances consumers’ memory about the products displayed on the left/top of an advertisement. This effect occurs because the dividing line orients participants’ first eye fixation to the left/top area of the (...) advertisement, such that their visual attention is largely restricted to that area and they could better remember the contents displayed on that area. The theoretical contributions and implications for marketers and consumers are discussed. (shrink)

Differences in the ability of students to judge images can be assessed by analyzing the individual preference order of images. To gain insights into potential heterogeneity in judgement of visual abstraction among students, we combine Bradley–Terry preference modeling and model-based recursive partitioning. In an experiment a sample of 1,020 high-school students ranked five sets of images, three of which with respect to their level of visual abstraction. Additionally, 24 art experts and 25 novices were given the same task, (...) while their eye movements were recorded. Results show that time spent on the task, the students’ age, and self-reported interest in visual puzzles had significant influence on rankings. Fixation time of experts and novices revealed that both groups paid more attention to ambiguous images. The presented approach makes the underlying latent scale of visual judgments quantifiable. (shrink)

The current study investigated the adaptations which occur in visual search behaviour as a function of expertise in rugby union players when completing attacking scenarios. Ten experienced players and ten novice players completed 2 vs. 1 attacking game scenarios. Starting with the ball in hand and wearing a mobile eye tracker throughout, participants were required to score a try against a defender. The scenarios allowed for a pass to their supporting player or trying to run past the defender. No (...) between group differences were found in fixating on the supporting attacking player. However, EP increased the length and frequency looking at the area immediately ahead of the supporting player, particularly when executing a spin pass. NP fixated longer and more frequently at the defender, whilst EP fixated more frequently in the space the supporting player would run into in Switch and Dummy Switch scenarios. More successful passes were completed and tries scored by EP compared to NP. Differences in visual search behaviour between experienced and NP suggest that the experts extract information from areas directly related to guiding the motor action; the space immediately ahead of the support player to pass the ball in. Contrastingly, novices use a more allocentric perspective where the actions from the defender are used to guide their motor actions. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrior research on attention bias in anxious youth, often utilising a visual dot probe task, has yielded inconsistent findings, which may be due to how bias is assessed and/or variability in the phenomenon. The present study utilises eye gaze tracking to assess attention bias in socially anxious adolescents, and explores several methodological and within-subject factors that may contribute to variability in attention bias. Attention bias to threat was measured in forty-two treatment-seeking adolescents diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder. Bias scores (...) toward emotional stimuli and bias scores away from emotional stimuli were explored. Bias scores changed between vigilance and avoidance within individuals and over the course of stimulus presentation. These differences were not associated with participant characteristics nor with self-reported social anxiety symptoms. However, clinician rated severity of social anxiety, explained a signific... (shrink)

What role do moment‐to‐moment comprehension processes play in visual attentional selection in picture stories? The current work uniquely tested the role of bridging inference generation processes on eye movements while participants viewed picture stories. Specific components of the Scene Perception and Event Comprehension Theory (SPECT) were tested. Bridging inference generation was induced by manipulating the presence of highly inferable actions embedded in picture stories. When inferable actions are missing, participants have increased viewing times for the immediately following critical image (...) (Magliano, Larson, Higgs, & Loschky, ). This study used eye‐tracking to test competing hypotheses about the increased viewing time: (a) Computational Load: inference generation processes increase overall computational load, producing longer fixation durations; (b) Visual Search: inference generation processes guide eye‐movements to pick up inference‐relevant information, producing more fixations. Participants had similar fixation durations, but they made more fixations while generating inferences, with that process starting from the fifth fixation. A follow‐up hypothesis predicted that when generating inferences, participants fixate scene regions important for generating the inference. A separate group of participants rated the inferential‐relevance of regions in the critical images, and results showed that these inferentially relevant regions predicted differences in other viewers’ eye movements. Thus, viewers’ event models in working memory affect visual attentional selection while viewing visual narratives. (shrink)

Several gaze contingent studies that used a fixed delay between physical eye movements and a display change documented a dip in the fixation duration distributions (e.g., Blanchard et al. 1984; McConkie et al. 1985; van Diepen et al. 1995). In a study by van Diepen et al. (1995), a moving mask paradigm was employed in which subjects searched line drawings of everyday scenes for non-objects. The appearance of the mask was delayed relative to the end of a saccade (beginning (...) of fixation) by 17, 46, 76 or 121 msec. All fixation duration distributions in the masking conditions exhibited a dip with longer masking delays resulting in the dip occurring at longer fixation durations. In contrast, a no-mask condition did not produce a dip. Similar effects in reading were reported by Blanchard et al. (1984), and McConkie et al. (1985). In both these studies the text was.. (shrink)

The visual system is a source of sensory information that perceives environmental stimuli and interacts with other sensory systems to generate visual and postural responses to maintain postural stability. Although the three sensory systems; the visual, vestibular, and somatosensory systems work concurrently to maintain postural control, the visual and vestibular system interaction is vital to differentiate self-motion from external motion to maintain postural stability. The visual system influences postural control playing a key role in perceiving (...) information required for this differentiation. The visual system’s main afferent information consists of optic flow and retinal slip that lead to the generation of visual and postural responses. Visual fixations generated by the visual system interact with the afferent information and the vestibular system to maintain visual and postural stability. This review synthesizes the roles of the visual system and their interaction with the vestibular system, to maintain postural stability. (shrink)

Rensink [Rensink, R. A. . Visual sensing without seeing. Psychological Science, 15, 27–32] has presented evidence suggesting visual changes may be sensed without an accompanying visual experience. Here, we report two experiments in which we monitored observers’ eye-movements whilst they searched for a difference between two simultaneously presented images and pressed separate response keys when a difference was seen or sensed. We first assessed whether sensing performance was random by collecting ratings of confidence in the validity of (...) sensing and assessing gaze location during sensing. Sensing was not random: fixation position and confidence ratings were different when a difference was present compared to catch trials. Furthermore, the uniformity of objects in the images and the type of difference appear to affect seeing and sensing differently, suggesting that these processes are dissociated. The possibility is discussed of a sensing mechanism that increases vigilance toward unconsciously registered differences, particularly changes to scene layout. (shrink)

The human sentence processor is able to make rapid predictions about upcoming linguistic input. For example, upon hearing the verb eat, anticipatory eye-movements are launched toward edible objects in a visual scene. However, the cognitive mechanisms that underlie anticipation remain to be elucidated in ecologically valid contexts. Previous research has, in fact, mainly used clip-art scenes and object arrays, raising the possibility that anticipatory eye-movements are limited to displays containing a small number of objects in a visually impoverished context. (...) In Experiment 1, we confirm that anticipation effects occur in real-world scenes and investigate the mechanisms that underlie such anticipation. In particular, we demonstrate that real-world scenes provide contextual information that anticipation can draw on: When the target object is not present in the scene, participants infer and fixate regions that are contextually appropriate. Experiment 2 investigates whether such contextual inference requires the co-presence of the scene, or whether memory representations can be utilized instead. The same real-world scenes as in Experiment 1 are presented to participants, but the scene disappears before the sentence is heard. We find that anticipation occurs even when the screen is blank, including when contextual inference is required. We conclude that anticipatory language processing is able to draw upon global scene representations to make contextual inferences. These findings are compatible with theories assuming contextual guidance, but posit a challenge for theories assuming object-based visual indices. (shrink)

Previous works usually report greater postural stability in precise visual tasks than in stationary-gaze tasks. However, existing cognitive models do not fully support these results as they assume that performing an attention-demanding task while standing would alter postural stability because of the competition of attention between the tasks. Contrary to these cognitive models, attentional resources may increase to create a synergy between visual and postural brain processes to perform precise oculomotor behaviors. To test this hypothesis, we investigated a (...) difficult searching task and a control free-viewing task. The precise visual task required the 16 young participants to find a target in densely furnished images. The free-viewing task consisted of looking at similar images without searching anything. As expected, the participants exhibited significantly lower body displacements and a significantly higher cognitive workload in the precise visual task than in the free-viewing task. Most important, our exploration showed functional synergies between visual and postural processes in the searching task, that is, significant negative relationships showing lower head and neck displacements to reach more expended zones of fixation. These functional synergies seemed to involve a greater attentional demand because they were not significant anymore when the cognitive workload was controlled. In the free-viewing task, only significant positive relationships were found and they did not involve any change in cognitive workload. An alternative cognitive model and its potential subtended neuroscientific circuit are proposed to explain the supposedly cognitively grounded functional nature of vision–posture synergies in precise visual tasks. (shrink)

TheConceptual Feature framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high-dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF framework to abstract words using eyetracking via an adaptation of the classical “visual word paradigm”. Healthy adults selected the lexical item most related to a probe word in a 4-item written word array comprising the (...) target and three distractors. The relation between the probe and each of the four words was determined using the semantic distance metrics derived from ACF ratings. Eye movement data indicated that the word that was most semantically related to the probe received more and longer fixations relative to distractors. Importantly, in sets where participants did not provide an overt behavioral response, the fixation rates were nonetheless significantly higher for targets than distractors, closely resembling trials where an expected response was given. Furthermore, ACF ratings which are based on individual words predicted eye fixation metrics of probe-target similarity at least as well as latent semantic analysis ratings which are based on word co-occurrence. The results provide further validation of Euclidean distance metrics derived from ACF ratings as a measure of one facet of the semantic relatedness of abstract words and suggest that they represent a reasonable approximation of the organization of abstract conceptual space. The data are also compatible with the broad notion that multiple sources of information shape the organization of abstract concepts. While the adapted “VWP” is potentially a more metacognitive task than the classical visual world paradigm, we argue that it offers potential utility for studying abstract word comprehension. (shrink)

Word recognition performance varies systematically as a function of where the eyes fixate in the word. Performance is maximal with the eye slightly left of the center of the word, and decreases drastically to both sides of this 'Optimal Viewing Position'. While manipulations of lexical factors have only marginal effects on this phenomenon, previous studies have pointed to a relation between the viewing position effect and letter legibility: When letter legibility drops, the viewing position effect becomes more exaggerated. To further (...) investigate this phenomenon, we improved letter legibility by magnifying letter size in a way that was proportional to the.. (shrink)

According to the perceptual-attentional limitations hypothesis, the confusion between expressions of disgust and anger may be due to the difficulty in perceptually distinguishing the two, or insufficient attention to their distinctive cues. The objective of the current study was to test this hypothesis as an explanation for the confusion between expressions of disgust and anger in adults using eye-movements. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to identify each emotion in 96 trials composed of prototypes of anger and prototypes of disgust. (...) In Experiment 2, fixation points oriented participants’ attention toward the eyes, the nose, or the mouth of each prototype. Results revealed that disgust was less accurately recognised than anger (Experiment 1 and 2), especially when the mouth was open (Experiment 1 and 2), and even when attention was oriented toward the distinctive features of disgust (Experiment 2). Additionally, when attention was oriented toward certain zones, the eyes (which contain characteristics of anger) had the longest dwell times, followed by the nose (which contains characteristics of disgust; Experiment 2). Thus, although participants may attend to the distinguishing features of disgust and anger, these may not aid them in accurately recognising each prototype. (shrink)

Recordings of neuronal activity in the monkey superior colliculus (SC) suggest that the two apparently independent effects of a visual distractor on both temporal (latency) and spatial (metrics) saccade parameters may be the result of lateral interactions between subpopulations of saccade-related neurons located at different sites on the motor map of the superior colliculus. One subpopulation is activated during the planing and initiation of a saccade; the other is activated by the appearance of a distractor. The inhibitory or facilitative (...) nature of this interaction depends on the distance between the distractor and the target and is consistent with the complex pattern of intrinsic and commissural collicular connections. (shrink)

When we read, we do not fixate on each word! How does that work? By deep theory those sorts of decisions must be the result of complex decisions involving the specific “word,” the linguistic context in which it appears, and visual information. But is reading really all that difficult? After all, simple heuristics models of reading seem to do sort of okay by only considering the additive effects of word and context. Entropy measures do well at predicting word “skipping” (...) and suggest that “word frequency” may play the dominant role in the “decision” to skip or not skip! (shrink)