Eye Movements and Visual Information Processing
Abstract
The goal of this project is to understand how saccadic eye movements facilitate the performance of natural tasks. Saccades face conflicting demands: they must bring the line of sight to chosen targets quickly without drawing on the cognitive or attentional resources needed to recognize objects or formulate behavioral plans. Relying solely on visuomotor reflexes would minimize effortful planning, but risk drawing the eye to irrelevant locations. Careful planning would improve accuracy, but create excessive demands on cognitive resources. We have found that the dilemma is resolved by specialized processes that direct saccades to important locations with minimal cognitive load. These include: strategies of planning saccadic sequences that favor increased scanning rate at the expense of careful target selection; attentional filters shared with perception; visual pooling mechanisms that automatically direct saccades to central locations within chosen objects. Experiments underway are examining saccadic planning strategies in a complex search task; attentional allocation accompanying sequences of saccades; saccadic localization of shapes with a prominent "part" structure.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 15, 2005
- Accession Number
- ADA437672
Entities
People
- Eileen Kowler
Organizations
- Rutgers University–New Brunswick