The effects on eye movements of complexity,novelty, and affective tone

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of stimulus complexity, novelty, and affective tone on the direction of eye movements of male college students. Motion pictures were taken of S’s eye while he viewed pairs of stimuli. In no instance, in any part of the 10 sec. viewing interval, did Ss as a group fixate longer on unpleasant stimuli when they were paired with either pleasant or neutral stimuli; and pleasant stimuli consistently dominated neutral stimuli. Also, novel stimuli and complex stimuli tended to dominate their non-novel and less complex competitors. Differences in instructions were found to markedly affect the magnitude but not the direction of fixation-dominance.