The effect of spatial frequency content on parameters of eye movements

Two experiments were conducted to examine the influence of the spatial frequency content of natural images on saccadic size and fixation duration. In the first experiment 10 pictures of natural textures were low-pass filtered (0.04-0.76cycles/deg) and high-pass filtered (1.91-19.56cycles/deg) and presented with the unfiltered originals in random order, each for 10s, to 18 participants, with the instruction to inspect them in order to find a suitable name. The participants' eye movements were recorded. It was found that low-pass filtered images resulted in larger saccadic amplitudes compared with high-pass filtered images. A second experiment was conducted with natural stimuli selected for different power spectra which supported the results outlined above. In general, low-spatial frequencies elicit larger saccades associated with shorter fixation durations whereas high-spatial frequencies elicit smaller saccades with longer fixation duration

Eye tracking and visual arts. Introduction to the special thematic issue

There 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

Eye movements in real and simulated driving and navigation control - Foreword to the Special Issue

The control of technological systems by human operators has been the object of study for many decades. The increasing complexity in the digital age has made the optimization of the interaction between system and human operator particularly necessary.. In the present thematic issue, ten exemplary articles are presented, ranging from observational field studies to experimental work in highly complex navigation simulators. For the human operator, the processes of attention play a crucial role, which are captured in the contributions listed in this thematic issue by eye-tracking devices. For many decades, eye tracking during car driving has been investigated extensively (e.g. Lappi & Lehtonen, 2013; Grüner & Ansorge, 2017). In the present special issue, Cvahte Ojsteršek & Topolšek (2019) provide a literature review and scientometric analysis of 139 eye-tracking studies investigating driver distraction. For future studies, the authors recommend a wider variety of distractor stimuli, a larger number of tested participants, and an increasing interdisciplinarity of researchers. In addition to most studies investigating bottom-up processes of covered attention, Tuhkanen, Pekkanen, Lehtonen & Lappi (2019) include the experimental control of top-down processes of overt attention in an active visuomotor steering task. The results indicate a bottom-up process of biasing the optic flow of the stimulus input in interaction with the top-down saccade planning induced by the steering task. An expanding area of technological development involves autonomous driving where actions of the human operator directly interact with the programmed reactions of the vehicle. Autonomous driving requires, however,a broader exploration of the entire visual input and less gaze directed towards the road centre. Schnebelen, Charron & Mars (2021) conducted experimental research in this area and concluded that gaze dynamics played the most important role in distinguishing between manual and automated driving. Through a combination of advanced gaze tracking systems with the latest vehicle environment sensors, Bickerdt, Wendland, Geisler, Sonnenberg & Kasneci (2021) conducted a study with 50 participants in a driving simulator and propose a novel way to determine perceptual limits which are applicable to realistic driving scenarios. Eye-Computer-Interaction (ECI) is an interactive method of directly controlling a technological device by means of ocular parameters. In this context, Niu, Gao, Xue, Zhang & Yang (2020) conducted two experiments to explore the optimum target size and gaze-triggering dwell time in ECI. Their results have an exemplary application value for future interface design. Aircraft training and pilot selection is commonly performed on simulators. This makes it possible to study human capabilities and their limitation in interaction with the simulated technological system. Based on their methodological developments and experimental results, Vlačić, Knežević, Mandal, Rođenkov & Vitsas (2020) propose a network approach with three target measures describing the individual saccade strategy of the participants in this study. In their analysis of the cognitive load of pilots, Babu, Jeevitha Shree, Prabhakar, Saluja, Pashilkar & Biswas (2019) investigated the ocular parameters of 14 pilots in a simulator and during test flights in an aircraft during air to ground attack training. Their results showed that ocular parameters are significantly different in different flying conditions and significantly correlate with altitude gradients during air to ground dive training tasks. In maritime training the use of simulations is per international regulations mandatory. Mao, Hildre & Zhang (2019) performed a study of crane lifting and compared novice and expert operators. Similarities and dissimilarities of eye behavior between novice and expert are outlined and discussed. The study of Atik & Arslan (2019) involves capturing and analyzing eye movement data of ship officers with sea experience in simulation exercises for assessing competency. Significant differences were found between electronic navigation competencies of expert and novice ship officers. The authors demonstrate that the eye tracking technology is a valuable tool for the assessment of electronic navigation competency. The focus of the study by Atik (2020) is the assessment and training of situational awareness of ship officers in naval Bridge Resource Management. The study shows that eye tracking provides the assessor with important novel data in simulator based maritime training, such as focus of attention, which is a decisive factor for the effectiveness of Bridge Resource Management training. The research presented in the different articles of this special thematic issue cover many different areas of application and involve specialists from different fields, but they converge on repeated demonstrations of the usefulness of measuring attentional processes by eye movements or using gaze parameters for controlling complex technological devices. Together, they share the common goal of improving the potential and safety of technology in the digital age by fitting it to human capabilities and limitations. References Atik, O. (2020). Eye tracking for assessment of situational awareness in bridge resource management training. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.7 Atik, O., & Arslan, O. (2019). Use of eye tracking for assessment of electronic navigation competency in maritime training. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.2 Babu, M. D., JeevithaShree, D. V., Prabhakar, G., Saluja, K. P. S., Pashilkar, A., & Biswas, P. (2019). Estimating pilots’ cognitive load from ocular parameters through simulation and in-flight studies. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.3 Cvahte Ojsteršek, T., & Topolšek, D. (2019). Eye tracking use in researching driver distraction: A scientometric and qualitative literature review approach. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.5 Grüner, M., & Ansorge, U. (2017). Mobile eye tracking during real-world night driving: A selective review of findings and recommendations for future research. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.10.2.1 Lappi, O., & Lehtonen, E. (2013). Eye-movements in real curve driving: pursuit-like optokinesis in vehicle frame of reference, stability in an allocentric reference coordinate system. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.6.1.4 Mao, R., Li, G., Hildre, H. P., & Zhang, H. (2019). Analysis and evaluation of eye behavior for marine operation training - A pilot study. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.6 Niu, Y.- feng, Gao, Y., Xue, C.- qi, Zhang, Y.- ting, & Yang, L.- xin. (2020). Improving eye–computer interaction interface design: Ergonomic investigations of the optimum target size and gaze-triggering dwell time. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.8 Schnebelen, D., Charron, C., & Mars, F. (2021). Model-based estimation of the state of vehicle automation as derived from the driver’s spontaneous visual strategies. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.10 Tuhkanen, S., Pekkanen, J., Lehtonen, E., & Lappi, O. (2019). Effects of an active visuomotor steering task on covert attention. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/Jemr.12.3.1 Vlačić, S. I., Knežević, A. Z., Mandal, S., Rođenkov, S., & Vitsas, P. (2020). Improving the pilot selection process by using eye-tracking tools. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(3). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.3.

Eye tracking and visualization. Introduction to the Special Thematic Issue

There is a growing interest in eye tracking technologies applied to support traditional visualization techniques like diagrams, charts, maps, or plots, either static, animated, or interactive ones. More complex data analyses are required to derive knowledge and meaning from the data. Eye tracking systems serve that purpose in combination with biological and computer vision, cognition, perception, visualization,  human-computer-interaction, as well as usability and user experience research. The 10 articles collected in this thematic special issue provide interesting examples how sophisticated methods of data analysis and representation enable researchers to discover and describe fundamental spatio-temporal regularities in the data. The human visual system, supported by appropriate visualization tools, enables the human operator to solve complex tasks, like understanding and interpreting three-dimensional medical images, controlling air traffic by radar displays, supporting instrument flight tasks, or interacting with virtual realities. The development and application of new visualization techniques is of major importance for future technological progress

Programme of the 21st European Conference on Eye Movements

About 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

The application of eye-tracking in music research

Though eye-tracking is typically a methodology applied in the visual research domain, recent studies suggest its relevance in the context of music research. There exists a community of researchers interested in this kind of research from varied disciplinary backgrounds scattered across the globe. Therefore, in August 2017, an international conference was held at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, to bring this research community together. The conference was dedicated to the topic of music and eye-tracking, asking the question: what do eye movements, pupil dilation, and blinking activity tell us about musical processing? This special issue is constituted of top-scoring research from the conference and spans a range of music-related topics. From tracking the gaze of performers in musical trios to basic research on how eye movements are affected by background music, the contents of this special issue highlight a variety of experimental approaches and possible applications of eye-tracking in music research

Editorial

Editorial to the Special Issue on Corpus Analyses of Eye Movements in Readin

Introduction to Special Thematic Issue, part 2 "Microsaccades: Empirical Research and Methodological Advances“

Microsaccades are at the interface between basic oculomotor phenomena and complex processes of cognitive functioning, and they also have been a challenge for subtle experimentation and adequate statistical analysis. In the second part of the special thematic issue (for the first part see  Martinez-Conde, Engbert, & Groner, 2020) the authors present a series of articles which demonstrate that microsaccades are still an interesting and rewarding area of scientific research the forefront of research in many areas of sensory, perceptual, and cognitive processes.. In their article “Pupillary and microsaccadic responses to cognitive effort and emotional arousal during complex decision making” Krejtz, Żurawska, Duchowski, & Wichary (2020) investigate pupillary and microsaccadic responses to information processing during multi-attribute decision making under affective priming. The participants were randomly assigned into three affective priming conditions (neutral, aversive, and erotic) and instructed to make discriminative decisions. As hypothesized by the authors, the results showed microsaccadic rate inhibition and pupillary dilation, depending on cognitive effort prior to decision and moderated by affective priming. Aversive priming increased pupillary and microsaccadic responses to information processing effort. The results indicate that pupillary response is more influenced by affective priming than microsaccadic rate. The results are discussed in the light of neuropsychological mechanisms of pupillary and microsaccadic behavior. In the article “Microsaccadic rate signatures correlate under monocular and binocular stimulation conditions” Essig, Leube, Rifai, & Wahl (2020) investigate microsaccades with respect to their directional distribution and rate under monocular and binocular conditions. In both stimulation conditions participants fixated a Gabor patch presented randomly in orientation of 45° or 135° over a wide range of spatial frequencies. Microsaccades were mostly horizontally oriented regardless of the spatial frequency of the grating. This outcome was consistent between both stimulation conditions. This study found that the microsaccadic rate signature curve correlates between both stimulation conditions, therefore extending the use of microsaccades to clinical applications, since parameters as contrast sensitivity, have frequently been measured monocularly in the clinical studies. The study “Microsaccades during high speed continuous visual search” by Martin, Davis, Riesenhuber, & Thorpe (2020) provides an analysis of the microsaccades occurring during visual search, targeting to small faces pasted either into cluttered background photos or into a simple gray background.  Participants were instructed to target singular 3-degree upright or inverted faces in changing scenes.  As soon as the participant’s gaze reached the target face, a new face was displayed in a different random location.  Regardless of the experimental context (e.g. background scene, no background scene), or target eccentricity (from 4 to 20 degrees of visual angle), The authors found that the microsaccade rate dropped to near zero levels within 12 milliseconds.  There were almost never any microsaccades after stimulus onset and before the first saccade to the face. In about 20% of the trials, there was a single microsaccade that occurred almost immediately after the preceding saccade’s offset.  The authors argue that a single feedforward pass through the visual hierarchy of processing a stimulus is needed to effectuate prolonged continuous visual search and provide evidence that microsaccades can serve perceptual functions like correcting saccades or effectuating task-oriented goals during continuous visual search. While many studies have characterized the eye movements during visual fixation, including microsaccades, in most cases only horizontal and vertical components have been recorded and analyzed. Little is known about the torsional component of microsaccades. In the study “Torsional component of microsaccades during fixation and quick phases during optokinetic stimulation” Sadeghpour & Otero-Millan (2020) recorded eye movements around the three axes of rotation during fixation and torsional optokinetic stimulus. The authors found that the average amplitude of the torsional component of microsaccades during fixation was 0.34 ± 0.07 degrees with velocities following a main sequence with a slope comparable to the horizontal and vertical components. The size of the torsional displacement during microsaccades was correlated with the horizontal but not the vertical component. In the presence of an optokinetic stimulus a nystagmus was induced producing  more frequent and larger torsional quick phases compared to microsaccades produced during fixation of a stationary stimulus. The torsional component and the vertical vergence component of quick phases increased with higher velocities. In previous research, microsaccades have been interpreted as psychophysiological indicators of task load. So far, it is still under debate how different types of task demands are influencing microsaccade rate. In their article “The interplay between task difficulty and microsaccade rate: Evidence for the critical role of visual load“ Schneider et al. (1921) examined the relation between visual load, mental load and microsaccade rate. The participants carried out a continuous performance task (n-back) in which visual task load (letters vs. abstract figures) and mental task load (1-back to 4-back) were manipulated as within-subjects variables. Eye tracking data, performance data as well as subjective workload were recorded. Data analysis revealed an increased level of microsaccade rate for stimuli of high visual demand (i.e. abstract figures), while mental demand (n-back-level) did not modulate microsaccade rate. The authors concluded that microsaccade rate reflects visual load of a task rather than its mental load. This conclusion is in accordance with the proposition of Krueger et al. (2019) “Microsaccades distinguish looking from seeing”, linking sensory with cognitive phenomena. The present special thematic issue adds several new interesting facets to the research landscape around microsaccades. They still remain an attractive focus of interdisciplinary research and transdisciplinary applications. Thus, as already noted in the first part of this special thematic issue, research on microsaccades will not only endure, but keep evolving as the knowledge base expands. References Krejtz, K., Żurawska, J., Duchowski, A., & Wichary, S. (2020). Pupillary and microsaccadic responses to cognitive effort and emotional arousal during complex decision making. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 13(5). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.13.5.2 Krueger, E., Schneider, A., Sawyer, B., Chavaillaz, A., Sonderegger, A., Groner, R., & Hancock, P. (2019). Microsaccades distinguish looking from seeing. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(6). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.6.2 Martin, J. G., Davis, C. E., Riesenhuber, M., & Thorpe, S. J. (2020). Microsaccades during high speed continuous visual search. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 13(5). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.13.5.4 Martinez-Conde, S., Engbert, R., & Groner, R. (2020). Microsaccades: Empirical Research and Methodological Advances: - Introduction to Part 1 of the Thematic Special Issue. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 12(6). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.12.6.1 Sadeghpour, S., & Otero-Millan, J. (2020). Torsional component of microsaccades during fixation and quick phases during optokinetic stimulation. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 13(5). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.13.5.5 Schneider, A., Sonderegger, A., Krueger, E., Meteier, Q., Luethold, P., & Chavaillaz, A. (2021). The interplay between task difficulty and microsaccade rate: Evidence for the critical role of visual load. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 13(5). https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.13.5.