Recent studies of eye movements in reading and other information processing tasks, such as music reading, typing, visual search, and scene perception, are reviewed. The major emphasis of the review is on reading as a specific example of cognitive processing. Basic topics discussed with respect to reading are (a) the characteristics of eye movements, (b) the perceptual span, (c) integration of information across saccades, (d) eye movement control, and (e) individual differences (including dyslexia). Similar topics are discussed with respect to the other tasks examined. The basic theme of the review is that eye movement data reflect moment-to-moment cognitive processes in the various tasks examined. Theoretical and practical considerations concerning the use of eye movement data are also discussed. Many studies using eye movements to investigate cognitive processes have appeared over the past 20 years. In an earlier review, I (Rayner, 1978b) argued that since the mid-1970s we have been in a third era of eye movement research and that the success of research in the current era would depend on the ingenuity of researchers in designing interesting and informative

In this paper, we present an overview of research in our laboratories on Multimodal Human Computer Interfaces. The goal for such interfaces is to free human computer interaction from the limitations and acceptance barriers due to rigid operating commands and keyboards as only/main I/O-device. Instead we move to involve all available human communication modalities. These human modalities include Speech, Gesture and Pointing,

Extensive research into the role of saccadic eye movements in human visual perception has been carried out for many years. Although the search patterns of different observers while studying the same image bear some common characteristics, there are often variations in the temporal order in which ®xation points are viewed. During visual search for a de®ned target, there is evidence for both parallel search, with which all objects are processed concurrently, and for sequential search, in which several ®xation points are found leading to the target. In this article, we present a review of both theoretical and experimental research directed towards better understanding of the underlying mechanisms of visual search. We begin by looking at the basic dynamics of saccadic eye movements and some of the major psychophysical models that have been developed over the years. An overview of the practical applications and future trends of visual search is then provided. Visual search is a common task that people perform throughout their daily life, and the number of applications inspired by the human visual search mechanism is potentially large. The purpose of this paper is to highlight some of the key opportunities for the image and vision computing

The goal of this research is to use eyegaze tracking data to provide insights into designing radiology workstations. We designed a look-alike radiology task with artificial stimuli. The task involved a comparative visual search of two side-by-side images, using two different interaction techniques. We tracked the eyegaze of four radiologists while they performed the task and measured the duration of the fixations on the controls, the left and right images, and on the artificial targets. Response time differences between the two interaction techniques exceeded the differences of fixations on the controls. Fixations on the left-side images are longer than the right-side images, and the search for multifeatured targets occurs in two phases: first a regular scan path search phase for a likely target and then a confirmation phase of several fixations on the target in each side-by-side image. We conclude that eyegaze tracking shows that disruption of visual search leads to cognitive disruption; subjects use the left image as a reference image and multiple saccades between left and right side images are necessary, because of the limitations of the visual working memory.

Computer simulations are a promising alternative to traditional surgery training methods especially in minimally-invasive procedures such as laparoscopic surgery. In minimally-invasive surgery (MIS), eye-hand coordination is important because the surgical site is viewed on a monitor with limited depth cues and a restricted field of view. Thus, the emphasis has been on training tools that e#ectively prepare novices for the eye-hand co-ordination di#culties in MIS. How people interact with the system is of interest to those developing surgical training tools.

We have developed an artificial neural network based gaze tracking system which can be customized to individual users. A three layer feed forward network, trained with standard error back propagation, is used to determine the position of a user's gaze from the appearance of the user's eye. Unlike other gaze trackers, which normally require the user to wear cumbersome headgear, or to use a chin rest to ensure head immobility, our system is entirely non-intrusive. Currently, the best intrusive gaze tracking systems are accurate to approximately 0.75 degrees. In our experiments, we have been able to achieve an accuracy of 1.5 degrees, while allowing head mobility. In its current implementation, our system works at 15 hz. In this paper we present an empirical analysis of the performance of a large number of artificial neural network architectures for this task. Suggestions for further explorations for neurally based gaze trackers are presented, and are related to other similar artificial n...