Journal of Eye Movement Research
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The association of eye movements and performance accuracy in a novel sight-reading task
The present study investigated how eye movements were associated with performance accuracy during sight-reading. Participants performed a complex span task in which sequences of single quarter note symbols that either enabled chunking or did not enable chunking were presented for subsequent serial recall. In between the presentation of each note, participants sight-read a notated melody on an electric piano in the tempo of 70 bpm. All melodies were unique but contained four types of note pairs: eighth-eighth, eighth-quarter, quarter-eighth, quarter-quarter. Analyses revealed that reading with fewer fixations was associated with a more accurate note onset. Fewer fixations might be advantageous for sight-reading as fewer saccades have to be planned and less information has to be integrated. Moreover, the quarter-quarter note pair was read with a larger number of fixations and the eighth-quarter note pair was read with a longer gaze duration. This suggests that when rhythm is processed, additional beats might trigger re-fixations and unconventional rhythmical patterns might trigger longer gazes. Neither recall accuracy nor chunking processes were found to explain additional variance in the eye movement data
Beyond the tracked line of sight - Evaluation of the peripheral usable field of view in a simulator setting
Combining advanced gaze tracking systems with the latest vehicle environment sensors opens up new fields of applications for driver assistance. Gaze tracking enables researchers to determine the location of a fixation, and under consideration of the visual saliency of the scene, to predict visual perception of objects. The perceptual limits, for stimulus identification, found in literature have mostly been determined in laboratory conditions using isolated stimuli, with a fixed gaze point, on a single screen with limited coverage of the field of view. The found limits are usually reported as hard limits. Such commonly used limits are therefore not applicable to settings with a wide field of view, natural viewing behavior and multi-stimuli. As handling of sudden, potentially critical driving maneuvers heavily relies on peripheral vision, the peripheral limits for feature perception need to be included in the determined perceptual limits. To analyze the human visual perception of different, simultaneously occurring, object changes (shape, color, movement) we conducted a study with 50 participants, in a driving simulator and we propose a novel way to determine perceptual limits, which is more applicable to driving scenarios
Reading eye movements performance on iPad vs print using a visagraph
This study investigated reading comprehension, reading speed, and the quality of eye movements while reading on an iPad, as compared to printed text. 31 visually-normal subjects were enrolled. Two of the passages were read from the Visagraph standardized text on iPad and Print. Eye movement characteristics and comprehension were evaluated. Mean (SD) fixation duration was significantly longer with the iPad at 270 ms (40) compared to the printed text (p=0.04) at 260 ms (40). Subjects’ mean reading rates were significantly lower on the iPad at 294 words per minute (wpm) than the printed text at 318 wpm (p=0.03). The mean (SD) overall reading duration was significantly (p=0.02) slower on the iPad that took 31 s (9.3) than the printed text at 28 s (8.0). Overall reading performance is lower with an iPad than printed text in normal individuals. These findings might be more consequential in children and adult slower readers when they read using iPads.
Gaze aversion in conversational settings: An investigation based on mock job interview
We report the results of an empirical study on gaze aversion during dyadic human-to-human conversation in an interview setting. To address various methodological challenges in as- sessing gaze-to-face contact, we followed an approach where the experiment was conducted twice, each time with a different set of interviewees. In one of them the interviewer’s gaze was tracked with an eye tracker, and in the other the interviewee’s gaze was tracked. The gaze sequences obtained in both experiments were analyzed and modeled as Discrete-Time Markov Chains. The results show that the interviewer made more frequent and longer gaze contacts compared to the interviewee. Also, the interviewer made mostly diagonal gaze aversions, whereas the interviewee made sideways aversions (left or right). We discuss the relevance of this research for Human-Robot Interaction, and discuss some future research problems
Silent versus reading out loud modes: An eye-tracking study
The main purpose of this study is to compare the silent and loud reading ability of typical and dyslexic readers, using eye-tracking technology to monitor the reading process. The participants (156 students of normal intelligence) were first divided into three groups based on their school grade, and each subgroup was then further separated into typical readers and students diagnosed with dyslexia. The students read the same text twice, one time silently and one time out loud. Various eye-tracking parameters were calculated for both types of reading. In general, the performance of the typical students was better for both modes of reading - regardless of age. In the older age groups, typical readers performed better at silent reading. The dyslexic readers in all age groups performed better at reading out loud. However, this was less prominent in secondary and upper secondary dyslexics, reflecting a slow shift towards silent reading mode as they age. Our results confirm that the eye-tracking parameters of dyslexics improve with age in both silent and loud reading, and their reading preference shifts slowly towards silent reading. Typical readers, before 4th grade do not show a clear reading mode preference, however, after that age they develop a clear preference for silent reading
A low-cost, high-performance video-based binocular eye tracker for psychophysical research
We describe a high-performance, pupil-based binocular eye tracker that approaches the performance of a well-established commercial system, but at a fraction of the cost. The eye tracker is built from standard hardware components, and its software (written in Visual C++) can be easily implemented. Because of its fast and simple linear calibration scheme, the eye tracker performs best in the central 10 degrees of the visual field. The eye tracker possesses a number of useful features: (1) automated calibration simultaneously in both eyes while subjects fixate four fixation points sequentially on a computer screen, (2) automated real-time continuous analysis of measurement noise, (3) automated blink detection, (4) and real-time analysis of pupil centration artifacts. This last feature is critical because it is known that pupil diameter changes can be erroneously registered by pupil-based trackers as a change in eye position. We evaluated the performance of our system against that of a well-established commercial system using simultaneous measurements in 10 participants. We propose our low-cost eye tracker as a promising resource for studies of binocular eye movements
Can longer gaze duration determine risky investment decisions? An interactive perspective
Can longer gaze duration determine risky investment decisions? Recent studies have tested how gaze influences people’s decisions and the boundary of the gaze effect. The current experiment used adaptive gaze-contingent manipulation by adding a self-determined option to test whether longer gaze duration can determine risky investment decisions. The results showed that both the expected value of each option and the gaze duration influenced people’s decisions. This result was consistent with the attentional diffusion model (aDDM) proposed by Krajbich et al. (2010), which suggests that gaze can influence the choice process by amplify the value of the choice. Therefore, the gaze duration would influence the decision when people do not have clear preference.The result also showed that the similarity between options and the computational difficulty would also influence the gaze effect. This result was inconsistent with prior research that used option similarities to represent difficulty, suggesting that both similarity between options and computational difficulty induce different underlying mechanisms of decision difficulty
Manipulating interword and interletter spacing in cursive script: An eye movements investigation of reading Persian
Persian is an Indo-Iranian language that features a derivation of Arabic cursive script, where most letters within words are connectable to adjacent letters with ligatures. Two experiments are reported where the properties of Persian script were utilized to investigate the effects of reducing interword spacing and increasing the interletter distance (ligature) within a word. Experiment 1 revealed that decreasing interword spacing while extending interletter ligature by the same amount was detrimental to reading speed. Experiment 2 largely replicated these findings. The experiments show that providing the readers with inaccurate word boundary information is detrimental to reading rate. This was achieved by reducing the interword space that follows letters that do not connect to the next letter in Experiment 1, and replacing the interword space with ligature that connected the words in Experiment 2. In both experiments, readers were able to comprehend the text read, despite the considerable costs to reading rates in the experimental conditions
Rhythmic subvocalization: An eye-tracking study on silent poetry reading
The present study investigates effects of conventionally metered and rhymed poetry on eye-movements in silent reading. Readers saw MRRL poems (i.e., metrically regular, rhymed language) in two layouts. In poem layout, verse endings coincided with line breaks. In prose layout verse endings could be mid-line. We also added metrical and rhyme anomalies. We hypothesized that silently reading MRRL results in building up auditive expectations that are based on a rhythmic “audible gestalt” and propose that rhythmicity is generated through subvocalization. Our results revealed that readers were sensitive to rhythmic-gestalt-anomalies but showed differential effects in poem and prose layouts. Metrical anomalies in particular resulted in robust reading disruptions across a variety of eye-movement measures in the poem layout and caused re-reading of the local context. Rhyme anomalies elicited stronger effects in prose layout and resulted in systematic re-reading of pre-rhymes. The presence or absence of rhythmic-gestalt-anomalies, as well as the layout manipulation, also affected reading in general. Effects of syllable number indicated a high degree of subvocalization. The overall pattern of results suggests that eye-movements reflect, and are closely aligned with, the rhythmic subvocalization of MRRL.
This study introduces a two-stage approach to the analysis of long MRRL stimuli and contributes to the discussion of how the processing of rhythm in music and speech may overlap
Vergence fusion sustaining oscillations
Introduction: Previous studies have shown that the slow, or fusion sustaining, component of disparity vergence contains oscillatory behavior. Given the delays in disparity vergence control, a feedback control system would be expected to exhibit oscillations following the initial transient period. This study extends the examination of this behavior to a wider range of frequencies and a larger number of subjects.
Methods: Disparity vergence responses to symmetrical 4.0 deg step changes in target position were recorded in 15 subjects. Approximately three seconds of the late component of each response were isolated using interactive graphics and the frequency spectrum calculated. Peaks in these spectra associated with oscillatory behavior were identified and examined.
Results: All subjects exhibited oscillatory behavior with primary frequencies ranging between 0.45 and 0.6 Hz; much lower than those identified in the earlier study. All responses showed significant higher frequency components. These higher frequency components were related in both frequency and amplitude with the primary frequency indicating that they are harmonics probably generated by nonlinearities in the neural control processes. A correlation was found across subjects between the amplitude of the primary frequency and the maximum velocity of the fusion initialing component probably due the gain of shared neural pathways.
Conclusion: Low frequency oscillatory behavior was found in all subjects adding support that the slow, or fusion sustaining, component is mediated by a feedback control. Data have clinical implications in that dysfunction in feedback control may manifest as additional vergence error which may be reflected in the frequency spectrum