Determinants of eye-fixation duration.

Four variables that might be presumed to contribute to the duration of an eye fixation were investigated in a series of seven experiments. These variables were stimulus processing time, relative emphasis on speed or accuracy, sequential dependencies across successive fixations, and amplitude of the preceding and following saccades. The pattern of results suggested a two-component model to account for the duration of single eye-fixations. One component is the minimum pause time of the eye, estimated to be about 200 msec without any stimulus processing. The second component involves stimulus processing, estimated to require a minimum of 50 to 100 msec, but subject to a number of influences that can substantially increase or decrease this duration. Although the authors did not generate this model to account for eye movements in complex tasks such as reading, they speculate about how complications could be added.

[1]  R. Dodge.  An experimental study of visual fixation , 1907 .

[2]  Miles A. Tinker,et al.  The fixational pause of the eyes , 1939 .

[3]  G. Westheimer.  Eye movement responses to a horizontally moving visual stimulus. , 1954, A.M.A. archives of ophthalmology.

[4]  M. Tinker,et al.  Recent studies of eye movements in reading. , 1958, Psychological bulletin.

[5]  J. Hyde,et al.  Some characteristics of voluntary human ocular movements in the horizontal plane. , 1959, American journal of ophthalmology.

[6]  P. B. Elliott,et al.  Tables of d , 1959 .

[7]  A. Bartz,et al.  Eye-movement latency, duration, and response time as a function of angular displacement. , 1962, Journal of experimental psychology.

[8]  Laurence R. Young,et al.  Variable Feedback Experiments Testing a Sampled Data Model for Eye Tracking Movements , 1963 .

[9]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Backward masking in vision , 1964 .

[10]  Phillip Liss,et al.  Does backward masking by visual noise stop stimulus processing? , 1968 .

[11]  Terry J. Spencer,et al.  Some Effects of Different Masking Stimuli on Iconic Storage , 1969 .

[12]  Saul Sternberg,et al.  The discovery of processing stages: Extensions of Donders' method , 1969 .

[13]  James E. Hoffman,et al.  Safari to masking land: A hunt for the elusive U , 1970 .

[14]  L Mitrani,et al.  Dependence of visual suppression on the angular size of voluntary saccadic eye movements. , 1970, Vision research.

[15]  T. Spencer,et al.  Evidence for an interruption theory of backward masking. , 1970, Journal of experimental psychology.

[16]  G. Sperling,et al.  Extremely Rapid Visual Search: The Maximum Rate of Scanning Letters for the Presence of a Numeral , 1971, Science.

[17]  C. Eriksen,et al.  Visual perceptual processing rates and backward and forward masking. , 1971, Journal of experimental psychology.

[18]  Frank Smith,et al.  Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read, Sixth Edition , 1973 .

[19]  W. J. Williams,et al.  Interactions of the horizontal and vertical human oculomotor systems: the saccadic systems. , 1972, Vision research.

[20]  B. L. Zuber,et al.  Some Temporal Characteristics of Information Processing During Reading. , 1972 .

[21]  M. Potter.  Meaning in visual search. , 1975, Science.

[22]  K. Rayner.  The perceptual span and peripheral cues in reading , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.

[23]  S. Dornič,et al.  Attention and performance V , 1976 .

[24]  G. McConkie,et al.  What guides a reader's eye movements? , 1976, Vision Research.

[25]  J. Senders,et al.  Eye Movements and Psychological Processes , 1976 .

[26]  Jonathan Vaughan,et al.  Delay of stimulus presentation after the saccade in visual search , 1977 .

[27]  G. McConkie,et al.  Eye movements and integrating information across fixations. , 1978, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[28]  Keith Rayner,et al.  Eye movement latencies for parafoveally presented words , 1978 .

[29]  M. Sanders,et al.  Eye Movements and the Higher Psychological Functions , 1979 .