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Programme of the 21st European Conference on Eye Movements
Full text linkAbout ECEM ECEM was initiated by Rudolf Groner (Bern), Dieter Heller (Bayreuth at the time) and Henk Breimer (Tilburg) in the 198 to provide a forum for an interdisciplinary group of scientists interested in eye movements. Since the inaugural meeting in Bern, the conference has been held every two years in different venues across Europe until 2021, when it was planned to take place in Leicester but was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic. It was decided to hold the meeting in Leicester in August 2022 instead, and as an in person meeting rather than an online or hybrid event. Incidentally, the present meeting is the third time the conference has come to the English East Midlands, now in Leicester following previous meetings in the neighbouring cities of Derby and Nottingham.
The sites of previous ECEMs and webpages can be found here
Abstracts of the 15th European Conference on Eye Movements 2009
No full textWelcome to the 15th European Conference on Eye Movements. The conference will begin with an address by the Mayor of Southampton, followed by a brief welcome from Professor Rudolf Groner. This will then be followed by a packed scientific program of almost 350 presentations. We hope you enjoy both the academic and intellectual aspects of the conference, as well as the social events that we have organised
Vergence Eye Movements: From Basic Science to Clinical Application: - Foreword to the Special Issue
No full textThe abstract book of the last European Conference on Eye Movements (Martinez-Conde, Martinez-Otero, Compte, & Groner, 2019) lists abstracts of 373 presentations, but less than five percent investigate vergence eye movements, i.e. the coordination of the right and left eye. Why then a special issue on this neglected issue? Human vision under natural conditions involves both eyes in coordination controlled by interacting processes subsumed under the concept of vergence.. Further, vergence is important for people in their daily lives since disorders of vergence can have serious consequences: ophthalmologists deal with squinting patients on the basis of heterophoria and heterotropia testing, eye strain or visual complaints can be related to impaired vergence dynamic or less accurate static vergence, remediation by optometrist includes vergence training or prism eye glasses, etc.
What are the reasons why processes of vergence are underestimated in our scientific community? The main reason seems to be the fact that the two eyes must be analysed separately with high precision. The differences between the measured two eye positions are typically relatively small and often at the limit of the recording systems. The question arises: Are the difference in the measurements due to noise, to error, or due to physiological processes? A further difficulty arises from the individual differences between observers. Thus, a vergence researcher has a rather difficult job in critically evaluating the eye tracker technology and taking into account different scientific areas like ophthalmology, optometry, psychology, and using adequate statistical analyses. This kind of research requires a multidisciplinary perspective.
In this special issue, three studies concentrated on the methodology of measuring vergence. An established clinical method is the prism cover test, which measures the heterophoria, i.e. the misalignment of the visual axes under monocular viewing conditions compared to binocular fixation. Paulus, Straube & Eggert (2019) developed an automated alternating cover test based on a combination of video-oculography and shutter glasses which minimizes stimulus noise and has a defined measurement noise. The total variance of the measurement is composed of components related to the observer, to the size of the heterophoria and to the availability of sensory vergence cues. Paulus et al. (2019) examined these factors and found that a major component of the within-subject variance of the manual prism cover test is due to the variability in the manifest heterophoria of the tested persons.
Wang, Holmqvist, & Alexa (2019) define a point of interest in binocular viewing, which is the intersection point of the two lines of sight in three-dimensional space, or – more precisely - the point closest to the two lines of sight. By means of theoretical simulations compared to empirical recordings they demonstrated a bias of the vergence distance depending on the noise of the tracked eye position. The authors propose mathematical models of calibration as part of the analysis of the experimental data.
Yaramothu, Jaswal & Alvarez (2019) measured vergence velocity and latency for step responses and found that eccentric circles with 6° eccentricity resulted in a faster response latency than a cross at central fixation. Their results have implications for the stimulus design in a variety of applications ranging from virtual reality to interventions in vision therapy.
Vergence operates well within a limited physiological range; but when the limit of fusion is reached, single vision is lost and double vision occurs. McGinnis, I., Tierney, R., Mansell, J., & Phillips, J. (2019) measured the clinically established convergence fusion break point (near point of convergence, NPC) by shifting a target towards the eyes in three different velocities and varied the verbal instruction (“double” versus “blurry”). The statistical analysis resulted in significant differences in NPC for the two variables target speed and verbal instruction. A consequence of this study will be that the experimental conditions for examinations and research on NPC must be standardized with respect to the experimental variables investigated in this study.
Dostalek, Hejda, Fliegel, Duchackova, Dusek, Hozman, Lukes & Autrata, R. (2019) investigated the fusion break point at a fixed test distance, but reduced the quality of the image in one eye by different modes (luminance contrast, higher-spatial frequency content, or luminance contrast plus higher-spatial frequency content). These modes had a certain influence, but the largest effect was the one of vergence demand, i.e. the absolute disparity of the two images. The authors argue that the image´s details (i.e. higher-spatial frequency content) protect binocular fusion from disruption under the lowest vergence demand.
The dynamics of vergence responses to step stimuli includes two components, a high velocity fusion initiating component followed by a slower component that may mediate sustained fusion. The slow fusion-sustaining component was analysed by Semmlow and Alvarez (2019). This component was modelled by the authors as a feedback control system consisting of a time delay and an integral/derivative controller. The fast fusion-initiating component was explored by Scheiman, Yaramothu, & Alvarez (2019) by means of analysing the ratio of the velocity divided by the response amplitude. For convergent step stimuli, this ratio was affected by a vergence/accommodation training therapy. The study of Poffa and Joos (2019) used a traditional clinical method referred to as vergence facility: the examiner induces vergence responses by applying prisms and counts the number vergence movements per minute. This clinical measure was found to be related to fixations disparity, i.e. the static vergence error measured with an eye tracker.
Comparing clinical test results with eye tracker recordings were included in the two studies which took also into account individual differences. Schroth, Joos, Alshuth & Jaschinski (2019) used a clinical nonius method for measuring the amount of the prism eye glass which is required to correct a fixation disparity (vergence error); this prism power was able to predict the prism-induced change in fixation disparity recorded with an eye tracker. Jainta and Joss (2019) tested the largest sample of subjects in this issue (n= 94) which allowed demonstrating the influence of the individual heterophoria on the binocular advantage, i.e. the extent to which during reading the fixation of a word is shorter in binocular than in monocular reading. The eye tracker measure of the heterophoria achieved superior results compared with subjective clinical measurements.
The academic background of the present authors illustrates that vergence research is covered by different scientific disciplines including computer engineering, physics, optometry, ophthalmology and psychology. This has the advantage that vergence research benefits from the different approaches of these disciplines, given that a common language and mutual understanding is achieved. A common basis for such a multidisciplinary research could be the seminal book of Ian Howard (2012).
This first special issue on vergence eye movements should give an overview of ongoing research in a relatively small scientific community and might motivate more relevant and multidisciplinary research, to be published in regular issues of the Journal of Eye Movement Research.
References
Dostalek, M., Hejda, J., Fliegel, K., Duchackova, M., Dusek, L., Hozman, J., Lukes, T., & Autrata, R. (2019). Influence of artificially generated interocular blur difference on fusion stability under vergence stress. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.4.
Howard, I. P. (2012). Perceiving in Depth, Volume 1: Basic Mechanisms. New York: Oxford University Press, USA.
Jainta, S., & Joss, J. (2019). Binocular advantages in reading revisited: attenuating effects of individual horizontal heterophoria. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.10.
Martinez-Conde, S., Martinez-Otero, L., Compte, A., & Groner, R. (2019). Abstracts of the 20th European Conference on Eye Movements, 18-22 August 2019, in Alicante (Spain). Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(7). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.7.1.
McGinnis, I., Tierney, R., Mansell, J., & Phillips, J. (2019). The Effect of target speed and verbal instruction on NPC measures in a young, healthy, and active population. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.5.
Paulus, M., Straube, A., & Eggert, T. (2019). Variance components affecting the repeatability of the alternating cover test. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.3.
Poffa, R., & Joos, R. (2019). The influence of vergence facility on binocular eye movements during reading. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.9.
Scheiman, M., Yaramothu, C., & Alvarez, T. (2019). Changes in the disparity vergence main sequence after treatment of symptomatic convergence insufficiency in children. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.6.
Schroth, V., Joos, R., Alshuth, E., & Jaschinski, W. (2019). Short-term effects of aligning prisms on the objective and subjective fixation disparity in far distance. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.8.
Semmlow, J.L., Yaramothu, C., & Alvarez, T.L. (2020). Dynamics of the disparity vergence slow (fusion sustaining) component. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.11.
Wang, X., Holmqvist, K., & Alexa, M. (2019). The mean point of vergence is biased under projection. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.2.
Yaramothu, C., Jaswal, R., & Alvarez, T. (2019). Target eccentricity and form influences disparity vergence eye movements responses: A temporal and dynamic analysis. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(4). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.4.7
Eye tracking and visual arts. Introduction to the special thematic issue
Full text linkThere is no visual art without the eye, just like no music without the ear. Visual art does not happen in the eye, but it has to go through the eye. Even for artworks with little visual focus, as in Conceptual Art, we need eyes to create and receive them. In order to see we need to move our eyes. It is therefore not surprising that, for centuries, the eye and its movements have been a major topic of literature on art. It is equally unsurprising that along recent technological improvements of eye tracking, this technology has become prolific for studying visual arts. This special issue of the Journal of Eye Movement Research is the first platform that provides a broad picture of recent developments in this area. In this introduction we present a history of eye movement in art literature, followed by a sketch of some of the oculometric parameters used for studies of visual art. In the third section we showcase each contribution to this special issue
Abstracts of the 13th European Conference on Eye Movements 2005
No full textThis issue contains the abstracts submitted for presentation at the Thirteenth European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM13), Bern, August 14 – 18, 2005, and reviewed by the Scientific Board, consisting of W. Becker, Ulm; C.J. Erkelens, Utrecht; J.M. Findlay, Durham; A.G. Gale, Derby; C.W. Hess, Bern; J. Hyönä, Turku; A. Kennedy, Dundee; K. Koga, Nagoya; G. Lüer, Göttingen; M. Menozzi, Zürich; W. Perrig, Bern; G. d’Ydewalle, Leuven; D. Zambarbieri, Pavia.
A quarter of a century ago, in 1980 initiated by Rudolf Groner and Dieter Heller, a transdisciplinary network called European Group of Scientists active in Eye Movement Research was founded. This group included scientists who used eye movement registration as a research tool and developed models based on oculomotor data obtained from a wide spectrum of phenomena, ranging from the neurophysiological to the perceptual and the cognitive level. The group was intended to serve the purpose of (1) exchanging information about current research, equipment and software, (2) organizing a conference (ECEM) at a different location all over Europe every other year.
Over the years ECEM has grown.
At the first conference in Bern the relatively small number of participants made it possible for the organisers to avoid conflicting parallel sessions, whereas with the ECEM’s steady growth, the introduction of parallel sessions soon became necessary. Although we are very happy about this year’s new record of 273 scientific contributions, we regret at the same time that this large number of participants necessitated the introduction of no less than four parallel sessions for oral presentations.
Part of the ECEM culture are the books with a selection of edited contributions which have traditionally always been published after the conferences. Unfortunately, over the years the sale prices of books have become prohibitively expensive and book chapters have increasingly been given a low rating in comparison to publications in peer reviewed journals. As a consequence of this trend, we are now considering to launch an online journal Eye Movement Research which would publish scientific papers either on the base of individual submissions by the authors or as a follow-up of workshops or thematic sessions at ECEM. In either case, a fair peer reviewing process should guarantee a high quality of the contributions.
Acknowledgements
Last but not least, we are happy to express our deep gratitude to the main sponsors of our conference and to all the people who helped to keep it going. The Max and Elsa Beer-Brawand Foundation generously funded the invited speakers. The Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences (SAGW) sponsored the organization of workshops and made it possible for us to reduce fees for students. Novartis Neuroscience sponsored the reception at the Zentrum Paul Klee Bern. The University of Bern hosted the conference in its magnificent historical building.
A team of devoted young scientists acted as staff during the conference: Eva Siegenthaler, Liliane Braun, Miriam Lörtscher, Esther Schollerer, Daniel Stricker, Simon Raess, Philipp Sury, Bartholomäus Wissmath, Linda Bodmer, Martina Brunnthaler, Daniela Häberli, Nadine Messerli, Felicie Notter, Didier Plaschy, Svetlana Ognjanovi, David Weibel, Yves Steiner and Dominik Moser.
We dedicate this book to the memory of two important men in eye movement research: Dieter Heller as one of the founders of the ECEM group, and Lawrence W. Stark as pioneer in cognitive modelling of oculomotor control. In an early planning stage of ECEM13 both had been invited as keynote speakers, but their untimely death made this plan impossible. In many sessions of ECEM13 the influence of their work will prevail
Microsaccades: Empirical Research and Methodological Advances: - Introduction to Part 1 of the Thematic Special Issue
No full textRecent technical developments and increased affordability of high-speed eye tracking devices have brought microsaccades to the forefront of research in many areas of sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processes. The present thematic issue on “Microsaccades: Empirical Research and Methodological Advances” invited authors to submit original research and reviews encompassing measurements and data analyses in fundamental, translational, and applied studies.
We present the first volume of this special issue, comprising 14 articles by research teams around the world. Contributions include the characterization of fixational eye movements and saccadic intrusions in neurological impairments and in visual disease, methodological developments in microsaccade detection, the measurement of fixational eye movements in applied and ecological scenarios, and advances in the current understanding of the relationship between microsaccades and cognition.
When fundamental research on microsaccades experienced a renaissance at the turn of the millennium (c.f. Martinez-Conde, Macknik, & Hubel, 2004), one could hardly have been so bold as to predict the manifold applications of research on fixational eye movements in clinic and practice. Through this great variety of areas of focus, some main topics emerge.
One such theme is the applicability of microsaccade measures to neurological and visual disease. Whereas microsaccade quantifications have been largely limited to participants with intact visual and oculomotor systems, recent research has extended this interest into the realm of neural and ophthalmic impairment (see Alexander, Macknik, & Martinez-Conde, 2018, for a review). In this volume, Becker et al analyze “Saccadic intrusions in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)” and Kang et al study “Fixational eye movement waveforms in amblyopia”, delving into the characteristics of fast and slow eye movements. Two other articles focus on how the degradation of visual information, which is relevant to many ophthalmic pathologies, affects microsaccadic features. Tang et al investigate the “Effects of visual blur on microsaccades on visual exploration” and conclude that the precision of an image on the fovea plays an important role in the calibration of microsaccade amplitudes during visual scanning. Otero-Millan et al use different kinds of visual stimuli and viewing tasks in the presence or absence of simulated scotomas, to determine the contributions of foveal and peripheral visual information to microsaccade production. They conclude that “Microsaccade generation requires a foveal anchor”.
The link between microsaccadic characteristics and cognitive processes has been a mainstay of microsaccade research for almost two decades, since studies in the early 2000s connected microsaccade directions to the spatial location of covert attentional cues (Engbert & Kliegl, 2003; Hafed & Clark, 2002). In the present volume, Dalmaso et al report that “Anticipation of cognitive conflict is reflected in microsaccades”, providing new insights about the top-down modulation of microsaccade dynamics. Ryan et al further examine the relationship between “Microsaccades and covert attention” during the performance of a continuous, divided-attention task, and find preliminary evidence that microsaccades track the ongoing allocation of spatial attention. Krueger et al discover that microsaccade rates modulate with visual attention demands and report that “Microsaccades distinguish looking from seeing”. Taking the ecological validity of microsaccade investigations one step further, Barnhart et al evaluate microsaccades during the observation of magic tricks and conclude that “Microsaccades reflect the dynamics of misdirected attention in magic”.
Two articles examine the role of individual differences and intraindividual variability over time on microsaccadic features. In “Reliability and correlates of intra-individual variability in the oculomotor system” Perquin and Bompas find evidence for intra-individual reliability over different time points, while cautioning that its use to classify self-reported individual differences remains unclear. Stafford et al provide a counterpoint in “Can microsaccade rate predict drug response?” by supporting the use of microsaccade occurrence as both a trait measure of individual differences and as a state measure of response to caffeine administration.
Methodological and technical advances are the subjects of three papers in this volume. In “Motion tracking of iris features to detect small eye movements” Chaudhary and Pelz describe a new video-based eye tracking methodology that relies on higher-order iris texture features, rather than on lower-order pupil center and corneal reflection features, to detect microsaccades with high confidence. Munz et al present an open source visual analytics system called “VisME: Visual microsaccades explorer” that allows users to interactively vary microsaccade filter parameters and evaluate the resulting effects on microsaccade behavior, with the goal of promoting reproducibility in data analyses. In “What makes a microsaccade? A review of 70 years research prompts a new detection method” Hauperich et al review the microsaccade properties reported between the 1940s and today, and use the stated range of parameters to develop a novel method of microsaccade detection.
Lastly, Alexander et al switch the focus from the past of microsaccade research to its future, by discussing the recent and upcoming applications of fixational eye movements to ecologically-valid and real-world scenarios. Their review “Microsaccades in applied environments: real-world applications of fixational eye movement measurements” covers the possibilities and challenges of taking microsaccade measurements out of the lab and into the field.
Microsaccades have engaged the interest of scientists from different backgrounds and disciplines for many decades and will certainly continue to do so. One reason for this fascination might be microsaccades’ role as a link between basic sensory processes and high-level cognitive phenomena, making them an attractive focus of interdisciplinary research and transdisciplinary applications. Thus, research on microsaccades will not only endure, but keep evolving as the present knowledge base expands. Part 2 of the special issue on microsaccades is already in progress with articles currently under review and will be published in 2021.
References
Alexander, R.G., Macknik, S.L., & Martinez-Conde, S. (2018). Microsaccade characteristics in neurological and ophthalmic disease. Frontiers in Neurology, 9:144.
Engbert, R. & Kliegl, R. (2003). Microsaccades uncover the orientation of covert attention. Vision Research, 43, 1035–1045.
Hafed, Z. M. & Clark, J. J. (2002). Microsaccades as an overt measure of covert attention shifts. Vision Research, 42, 2533–2545.
Martinez-Conde, S., Macknik, S.L., & Hubel, D.H. (2004). The role of fixational eye movements in visual perception. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 5(3), 229-40.
 
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Author index of the 16th European Conference on Eye Movements 2011
No full textThis document contains the author index of the 16th European Conference on Eye Movements, August 21-25 2011 in Marseille, Franc
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