The Analysis of Eye-movement Indexes in Scene Perception on Fixation and Saccade Perspective

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2020, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (6) : 1312-1318.

PDF(625 KB)
PDF(625 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2020, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (6) : 1312-1318.

The Analysis of Eye-movement Indexes in Scene Perception on Fixation and Saccade Perspective

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Abstract

Visual information is generally the main basis for people to understand the external environment in daily life, and the eye is the only organ that obtains visual information. There evidences showed that 70%~90% of the information is obtained through people’s eyes. Therefore, some researchers focused on some issues such as what is the eye fixation, how long has it been seen, and where has the eye moved etc during viewing for scene, text, and advertisement design so on. On the one hand, researchers try to explore what information attracts people’s attention, on the other hand, they also try to know what is the mental activity of people in the process of watching or eye movement? Eye movement is like an operation window of the attention system, which can reflect the ongoing visual and cognitive processing in a sensitive and immediate manner. Therefore, eye movement paradigm is an important research method to scene perception, text understanding, and so on, which can record the information processing process of scene perception in real time. For instance, in the study of the time process and information processing of scene perception, the application of eye movement technology provides a possibility for people to understand the immediate attention of scene viewers, input of sensory information, and even the influence of knowledge and experience. More importantly, eye movement measures can truly reflect the mental processing mechanism of information processing, and the analysis of eye movement indexes is helpful to reveal the psychological characteristics of cognitive processing. However, people’s mental activities are extremely complex, and corresponding eye movement characteristics also have diversity and complexity. If researchers want to understand people’s complex mental activities during scene perception, they have to explain accurately all kinds of eye movement indicators, and understand the relationship between eye movement indicators and mental activities. Although eye movement techniques have been widely used in the study of scene perception, there is little review of eye movement indicators and their mental meanings. Yan and Bai (2003, 2013) have analyzed mental meaning of eye movement indicators in the reading researching. However, reading and scene perception are different at aspects of mental processing, and there are also significant difference in eye movement characteristics and mental meanings. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the eye movement characteristics in the process of scene perception. There are also different dimensions for the analysis of eye movement measures, such as global and local, temporal and spatial. This paper reviews that the existing classification of eye movement measure indicators and classifies them into fixation category and saccade category based on the eye movement characteristics in scene perception. Fixation and saccade are two basic events in the process of scene perception. Fixation variables include start and end time, first fixation duration, average fixation duration, first-pass gaze duration, etc; and saccade variables include start and end time, start and end position, amplitude, angle, direction, average and peak velocity, etc. This study analyzes and introduces that the fixation indicators and saccade indicators, and introduces the definition standard corresponding indicators, mental meaning, and their application in research. Finally, possible problems in the analysis and application of eye movement indexes are puts forward, as well as the possible fields to be expanded in the future research are also discussed.

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The Analysis of Eye-movement Indexes in Scene Perception on Fixation and Saccade Perspective[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2020, 43(6): 1312-1318
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