Gender differences and reproducibility in exploratory eye movements of normal subjects

Exploratory eye movements were recorded using an eye‐mark recorder in 48 normal subjects (24 male and 24 female). Gender differences were examined regarding four eye movement parameters such as the mean gazing time, the total number of gazing points, and the mean eye scanning length and the total eye scanning length. The mean gazing time of women was significantly longer than that of men, and the total number of gazing points of women was significantly less than that of men. The mean eye‐scanning length of men and women did not differ. The total eye scanning length of men was significantly longer than that of women. Reproducibility between sessions of the four eye movement parameters above was expressed as Pearson correlation coefficients (r) in 24 healthy adults before and after a month interval, yielding respective coefficients of 0.65, 0.42, 0.56 and 0.61. These results suggested that differences in exploratory eye movements between men and women may reflect differences in the characteristics of visual information processing and also confirmed the reproducibility of exploratory eye movement parameters.

[1]  J. Singer.  Personal and environmental determinants of perception in a size constancy experiment. , 1952, Journal of experimental psychology.

[2]  A. Luria,et al.  Disorders of "simultaneous perception" in a case of bilateral occipito-parietal brain injury. , 1959, Brain : a journal of neurology.

[3]  E. Poulton,et al.  Peripheral vision, refractoriness and eye movements in fast oral reading. , 1962, British journal of psychology.

[4]  G. Helmstadter,et al.  Principles of Psychological Measurement , 1964 .

[5]  P. London.  Injury , 1969, Definitions.

[6]  M. Guttentag.  Cognitive Functioning in Parallel and Sequential Processing Conditions , 1973 .

[7]  M. Buchsbaum,et al.  Age and sex differences in averaged evoked responses in a normal population, with observations on patients with gonadal dysgenesis. , 1974, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[8]  M. Coltheart,et al.  Sex differences in imagery and reading , 1975, Nature.

[9]  N J Yasillo,et al.  Abnormal-pursuit eye movements in schizophrenia. Evidence for a genetic indicator. , 1977, Archives of general psychiatry.

[10]  F. Lolas.  Interhemispheric and sex differences in the visual evoked response recovery cycle. , 1979, Neuropsychobiology.

[11]  R. Holloway,,et al.  Sexual dimorphism in the human corpus callosum. , 1982, Science.

[12]  C. Welch,et al.  York River Destratification: An Estuary-Subestuary Interaction , 1982, Science.

[13]  D B Hier,et al.  Spatial ability in androgen-deficient men. , 1982, The New England journal of medicine.

[14]  Emanuel Donchin,et al.  Definition, Identification, and Reliability of Measurement of the P300 Component of the Event-Related Brain Potential , 1987 .

[15]  R. Freedman,et al.  Gating of the auditory evoked potential in children and adults. , 1987, Psychophysiology.

[16]  E. Yund,et al.  Scanning the visual field without eye movements—A sex difference , 1987, Neuropsychologia.

[17]  D. Trune,et al.  The relative importance of head size, gender and age on the auditory brainstem response , 1988, Hearing Research.

[18]  L. Giambra,et al.  Sex differences in sustained attention across the adult life span. , 1989, The Journal of applied psychology.

[19]  E. Matsushima,et al.  Eye movements in acute, chronic, and remitted schizophrenics , 1990, Biological Psychiatry.

[20]  S. Baumann,et al.  Gender differences in source location for the N100 auditory evoked magnetic field. , 1991, Electroencephalography and clinical neurophysiology.

[21]  R. Emmerson,et al.  Gender Differences in Pattern Reversal Evoked Potential Amplitude: Influence of Check Size and Single Trial Response Variability , 1992 .

[22]  A. Abbott.  Bootstrapping a new institute , 1994, Nature.

[23]  Elizabeth Hampson,et al.  Cognitive Pattern in Men and Women Is Influenced by Fluctuations in Sex Hormones , 1994 .

[24]  N. Swerdlow,et al.  Sensorimotor gating of the human startle reflex: Gender and laterality , 1994, Biological Psychiatry.

[25]  L. Katz,et al.  Sex differences in the functional organization of the brain for language , 1995, Nature.

[26]  K. Morita,et al.  Reliability of the probability effect on event-related potentials during repeated testing. , 1995, The Kurume medical journal.