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

Change blindness is the striking failure to see large changes that normally would be noticed easily. Over the past decade this phenomenon has greatly contributed to our understanding of attention, perception, and even consciousness. The surprising extent of change blindness explains its broad appeal, but its counterintuitive nature has also engendered confusions about the kinds of inferences that legitimately follow from it. Here we discuss the legitimate and the erroneous inferences that have been drawn, and offer a set of requirements to help separate them. In doing so, we clarify the genuine contributions of change blindness research to our understanding of visual perception and awareness, and provide a glimpse of some ways in which change blindness might shape future research.

When brief blank fields are placed between alternating displays of an original and a modified scene, a striking failure of perception is induced: The changes become extremely difficult to notice, even when they are large, presented repeatedly, and the observer expects them to occur (Rensink, O’Regan, & Clark, 1997). To determine the mechanisms behind this induced “change blindness”, four experiments examine its dependence on initial preview and on the nature of the interruptions used. Results support the proposal that representations at the early stages of visual processing are inherently volatile, and that focused attention is needed to stabilize them sufficiently to support the perception of change. Over the past few decades, evidence has been accumulating that—contrary to our subjective impressions—we do not have a coherent and detailed representation of the coherent and detailed world that surrounds us. For example,

This paper examines the nature of visual representations that direct ongoing performance in sensorimotor tasks. Performance of such natural tasks requires relating visual information from different gaze positions. To explore this we used the technique of making task relevant display changes during saccadic eye movements. Subjects copied a pattern of colored blocks on a computer monitor, using the mouse to drag the blocks across the screen. Eye position was monitored using a dual-purkinje eye tracker, and the color of blocks in the pattern was changed at different points in task performance. When the target of the saccade changed color during the saccade, the duration of fixations on the model pattern increased, depending on the point in the task that the change was made. Thus different fixations on the same visual stimulus served a different purpose. The results also indicated that the visual information that is retained across successive fixations depends on moment by moment task dema...

This paper investigates the temporal dependencies of natural vision by measuring eye and hand movements while subjects made a sandwich. The phenomenon of change blindness suggests these temporal dependencies might be limited. Our observations are largely consistent with this, suggesting that much natural vision can be accomplished with “just-in-time ” representations. However, we also observe several aspects of performance that point to the need for some representation of the spatial structure of the scene that is built up over different fixations. Patterns of eye-hand coordination and fixation sequences suggest the need for planning and coordinating movements over a period of a few seconds. This planning must be in a coordinate frame that is independent of eye position, and thus requires a representation of the spatial structure in a scene that is built up over different fixations.

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Recent physiological experiments have shown that the responses of many neurons in V1 and V3a are modulated by the direction of gaze. We have developed a neural network model of the hierarchy of maps in visual cortex to explore the hypothesis that visual features are encoded in egocentric (spatiotopic) coordinates at early stages of visual processing. Most psychophysical studies that have attempted to examine this question have concluded that features are represented in reti-nal coordinates, but the interpretation of these experiments does not preclude the type of retinospatiotopic representation that is embodied in our model. The model also explains why electrical stimulation experiments in visual cortex cannot distinguish between retinal and retinospatiotopic coordinates in the early stages of visual processing. Psychophysical predictions are made for testing the existence of retinospatiotopic representations. The three most common types of coordinates used for representing visual objects in biological and computer vision systems are eye-centered (retinal), object-centered, and viewer-centered (egocentric). Eye-centered representations are consistent with many physiological and psychophysical studies of early vision. Neurons in primary visual cortex and most extrastriate areas are organized into retinotopic maps (Felleman & Van Essen, 1991). Most psychophysical experiments designed to determine the nature of spatial representation at early visual stages have reached the same conclusion, as we review in the discussion. Other types of representation are believed to be used at the highest stages of visual processing. Mishkin, Ungerleider, and Macko (1983) proposed a functional distinction between two main streams of processing, the "what " and "where " pathways leading, respectively, in the temporal and parietal cortex. Object-centered reference frames have been suggested for the representation of objects in the inferior temporal cortex and egocentric reference frames have been proposed for the representation of spatial location in the parietal cortex (Andersen,

In this paper, we propose that information maximization can provide a unified framework for understanding saccadic eyemovements. In this framework, the mutual information among the cortical representations of the retinal image, the priors constructed from our long term visual experience, and a dynamic short-term internal representation constructed from recent saccades provides a map for guiding eyenavigation. By directing the eyes to locations of maximum complexity in neuronal ensemble responses at each step, the automatic saccadic eyemovement system greedily collects information about the external world, while modifying the neural representations in the process. This framework attempts to connect several psychological phenomena, such as pop-out and inhibition of return, to long term visual experience and short term working memory. It also provides an interesting perspectiveon contextual computation and formation of neural representation in the visual system. 1

cade (Rensink, O'Regan, & Clark, 1997), or is otherwise masked or hidden from view at the time of the change (e.g., Simons & Levin, 1998). This "change blindness" effect is striking because it seemingly undermines a long-standing assumption in vision science that the visual system constructs a complete and integrated representation of the visual world across glimpses. Furthermore, the effect has been taken to call into question the intuition that perceptual experience directly reflects the nature of the underlying visual representation; instead, change blindness appears to indicate that our experience of a complete and detailed visual world is based on what is in fact a sparse and incomplete visual representation (Dennett, 1991). Recent theoretical treatments of scene perception based on the change blindness effect have converged on two assumptions concerning visual representation. First, all forms of visual representation of a scene element are assumed to be lost once attention is wi

this memory and can explicitly report details of a changed object in response to probing questions. The results of these real-world change detection studies are discussed in the context of broader claims about change blindness. 2002 Elsevier Science (USA) Our experience of a rich, stable visual world often leads to the intuitive belief that our representations of that world are correspondingly detailed and precise. But increasing evidence for "change blindness," the inability to detect large changes to scenes from one glance to the next, has inspired claims that little to no information about the world is preserved in visual short term memory (e.g., O'Regan, 1992; Rensink, 2000a, 2000b). Such claims have some historical precedents (e.g., Gibson, 1986/1979; Hochberg, 1986; Stroud, 1955), but they do not necessarily follow from change blindness. Change blindness could occur for many reasons, even when observers have representations of the pre-change scene (Simons, 2000b). For example, change blindness could reflect a failure to compare representations of the pre- and post-change scene. Here, we present evidence that supports this possibility by showing that some subjects who fail to report a change can subsequently report features of the pre-change object when asked