Ординатура / Офтальмология / Английские материалы / Eye Movements A Window on Mind and Brain_Van Gompel_2007

Note: 5.9% of articles did not specify the country of origin.

Nr articles: Number of articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in title in the social sciences database in Web of Knowledge for the period 1976–1980, searched on 15 May 2006.

% of all articles: Percentage of articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in title out of all eye-movement articles from all countries.

Nr articles/million population: Number of articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in title per million population. Population data from Bradfield, Keillor, and Pragnell (1976).

of eye-movement articles was only five. In general, there were few eye-movement articles in the social sciences during this period produced in any country apart from the United States. Interestingly, however, the foundation for international conferences focusing on eye movements was forged in Europe, with the first ECEM in Bern, Switzerland, in 1981.

When we look at Table 14, which ranks the countries that produced most social science eye-movement articles for the period 2001–2005, we see that the percentage of eye-movement articles produced in the United States is quite a bit smaller than in the 1976–1980 period. By contrast, the percentages for other countries such as England, Germany, and Japan have gone up. In fact, the United States is the only country that occurs in both tables for which the number of eye-movement articles per million population is lower in 2001–2005 than in 1976–1980. This suggests that within the social sciences, the United States is losing some of its dominance in eye-movement research, although it remains the case that most eye-movement articles continue to be produced by US-based researchers. Further comparison of Table 14 with Table 13 shows that Czechoslovakia, Israel, Bulgaria, and Switzerland have disappeared from the top 10 and have been replaced by Scotland, The Netherlands, Australia, and Spain. Finally, the number of eye-movement articles per million population shows that Scotland produces by far the most eye-movement articles in the social sciences, while England and The Netherlands also do well.

It is difficult to gauge the most important developments in eye-movement research from database searches, but very easy to ask practitioners in the area for their views.

Table 14

Countries producing most articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in the title. Web of Science, social sciences, 2001–2005

Note: 2.6% of articles did not specify the country of origin.

Nr articles: Number of articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in title in the social sciences database in Web of Knowledge for the period 2001–2005, searched on 15 May 2006.

% of all articles: Percentage of articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in title out of all eye-movement articles from all countries.

Nr articles/million population: Number of articles with ‘eye(-)movement(s)’ in title per million population. Population data from Bruinsma, Koedam, Dilworth, and Stuart-Jones (2005).

We therefore asked the respondents of our questionnaire what they thought the most important developments in eye-movement research have been over the past 5 years. As shown in Table 15, most respondents mentioned computational modelling (especially in the areas of reading and scene perception), and this is reflected in this book

Table 15

Most important developments in eye-movement research in the past 5 years according to respondents to the questionnaire

Note: N = 44.

(Part 4). Many also mentioned recent developments in eye-tracking technology such as the introduction of inexpensive, easy-to-use eye-trackers and free-view trackers. Although advances in eye-tracking technology are not really new developments in research per se, new technologies frequently trigger new types of research. Many chapters in this book demonstrate ways in which new eye-tracking technologies have been used to advance new types of research. Developments in the anatomical and physiological mapping of the visual-oculomotor system was also regularly mentioned, despite the fact that relatively few researchers working on physiology and clinical studies responded. The chapters in Part 2 show some of these developments. Eye movements as a tool for investigating spoken language processing also figures prominently in this book (Part 6), eye-movement methodology in combination with fMRI is used in Chapter 6 by Ford, Brown, and Everling, and Part 8 is on eye movements in naturalistic settings and tasks.

3. Conclusions

As is clear from the discussion of the different parts in this book, eye-movement research is an extremely diverse field that brings together researchers from many different subdisciplines. Several new areas have developed recently, such as eye movements for investigating spoken language processing, historical eye-movement research, and eye movements in natural environments. Other, long established areas have also seen many important new advances.

The analyses of the responses to a questionnaire sent out to attendants of ECEM and a citation count from Web of Knowledge gave us an impression of the most influential publications in eye-movement research. Interestingly, the results from the questionnaire and the citation counts proved more disparate than expected. It appears that the publications which are considered most influential by eye-movement specialists are not necessarily the ones most frequently cited. Our analyses of both the questionnaire responses and articles in Web of Knowledge indicated that eye-movement articles are published in a wide variety of different journals. Only very recently has a specialised eye-movement journal (the Journal of Eye Movement Research) been established. Given the cross-disciplinary nature of eye-movement research and the success of ECEM and ECEM edited volumes, this journal could make an important contribution to the field of eye-movement research.

Looking at the number of journal articles published since 1970, we see a steady increase in the number of eye-movement articles. However, the number of articles relative to those published in all other areas remains fairly constant, except in the social sciences where the relative number of eye-movement articles has gone up in recent years. The countries where most eye-movement research is produced have also remained similar, with the United States dominating eye-movement output across our period of investigation. However, smaller countries such as Scotland, The Netherlands, and England produce a larger proportion of eye-movement articles relative to their populations. And we do, of course, take great delight seeing the pre-eminent position of Scotland in this respect!

Finally, the respondents to our questionnaire indicated that the most important developments in eye-movement research since 2001 involved computational modelling, new eye-tracking technologies, anatomical and physiological mapping of the visual– oculomotor system, eye movements during spoken language processing, the use of eyemovement methodology in combination with fMRI, and eye movements in naturalistic settings and tasks. We expect that in the near future, these areas of research will continue to gain in importance, while at the same time, well-established areas of eye-movement research investigating reading, attention, and scene perception will continue to flourish. We hope that you, the reader, agree that ECEM12, and this book which grew out of it, have provided a good reflection of the importance and development of this area, and we foresee future ECEMs maintaining their position as a leading nexus of this knowledge and serving as a prime source for the dissemination of work related to all aspects of eye-movement research.

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PART 1

HISTORY OF EYE-MOVEMENT RESEARCH

Edited by

ROBIN L. HILL

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Abstract

Interest in recording eye movements has been informed by studies of vision. The importance of scanning a scene was recognised theoretically before it was examined experimentally. The contrast between the restricted range of distinct vision and the experience of a uniform and clear visual field focused attention on rapid eye movements. However, they were reported initially in the context of visual vertigo following body rotation; characteristics of the slow and fast phases of nystagmus were recorded by comparing the apparent motion of an afterimage (formed before rotation) with that of a real image. Afterimages were next employed to record torsion when the eye was in tertiary positions. Saccadic eye movements when reading or viewing pictures were measured with a variety of devices from the late nineteenth century. Researchers were genuinely surprised by what they found: contrary to our experience of a stable world and of smooth transitions between objects fixated, the eyes moved rapidly and discontinuously. Vision was generally restricted to the short periods of fixation between saccades.

The history of research on eye movements is fascinating, but it has not received the attention associated with many other aspects of vision (see Wade & Tatler, 2005). Scanning has been neglected relative to the seen. It is, however, the seen (vision) that has provided the stimulus for examining the details of scanning (eye movements). The restriction of distinct vision to a small region around the visual axis led to considerations of how a full impression of the visual surroundings could be formed. However, the precise pattern of scanning was to elude students of seeing for centuries. Knowledge about the limited region of clear vision was known to the ancients, but speculations regarding the manner in which it could be overcome were not advanced until the eighteenth century – before sophisticated devices were available for recording eye movements.

We tend to associate experimental studies of eye movements with the more detailed examinations of reading that were undertaken at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. We also generally acknowledge that the link between eye movements and image processing was established experimentally by an American. However, many might be surprised by the identity of the American scientist, who worked over a century before Raymond Dodge (1871–1942). I will argue that William Charles Wells (1757–1817) should be accorded the credit for initiating the experimental study of eye movements. He might not be well known, but the ingenuity of his experiments was impressive. Wells was born to Scottish parents in Charlestown, South Carolina, educated in Scotland, and he practised medicine in London. He wrote a monograph on binocular vision in 1792 after which he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London. His experiments on and explanation of the formation of dew (Wells, 1814) resulted in the award of the Rumford Medal and in his election as Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He also provided an account of natural selection in 1813, as Charles Darwin (1809–1882) later acknowledged. His initial researches were concerned principally with binocular vision, but he also conducted experimental studies of eye movements, visual resolution, visual motion, visual persistence, accommodation and the effects of belladonna on it. His medical practice was not a thriving one although his small circle of distinguished friends held him in high regard. He wrote a memoir of his life in his last year (see Wells, 1818); this, together with his monograph on vision and related articles, is reprinted in Wade (2003a). Wells examined aspects of vertigo and eye movements as they related to visual motion and it was in this context that he crossed swords with Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802).

Darwin’s major work on physiology and psychology was Zoonomia, the first volume of which was published in 1794 and the second in 1796. The first chapter in the book was concerned with motion, after which is one on eye movements, although its title is “The motions of the retina demonstrated by experiments”. Afterimages (or ocular spectra as he called them) were the tool used to examine the effects of eye movements, and he drew heavily on an article ostensibly written by his son, Robert Waring Darwin (1766–1848), some years earlier (R. Darwin, 1786). In fact, Robert’s son, Charles Darwin (1887), suggested that the article had been written by Erasmus! The situation remains one of uncertainty regarding the authorship of the article (see Wade, 2002). One of the features