EYE MOVEMENTS REVEAL THE SPATIOTEMPORAL DYNAMICS OF VISUAL SEARCH

Abstract— Given that attention precedes an eye movement to a target it becomes possible to use fixation sequences to probe the spatiotemporal dynamics of search Applying this method to a realistic search task, we found eye movements directed to the geometric centers of progressively smaller groups of objects rather than accurate fixations to individual objects in a display Such a binary search strategy is consistent with zoom-lens models panting an initially broad distribution of search, followed by a narrowing of this search region until only the target is selected We also interpret this oculo-motor averaging behavior as evidence for an initially parallel search analysis that becomes increasingly serial as the search process converges on the target.