Four participants viewed artwork (5 abstract and 9 representational paintings) displayed in a museum, while wearing a portable eye tracker. We tested whether features in the paintings would determine the viewers' saccade-fixation patterns and viewing times. Participants produced unique eye-movement patterns that varied with each painting, regardless of genre. Some fixations clustered on features, predefined as informative of a narrative illustrated by the painting, whereas other fixations fell on homogenous patches of color; however, the features selected for fixation varied considerably across viewers and paintings. Participants' mean fixation durations for abstract artwork increased as viewing time progressed, suggesting that eye movement patterns change over time. Participants' aesthetic judgments of the paintings were not significantly correlated with fixation durations or viewing time, contrary to our predictions. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive factors that may influence eye movements made when viewing artwork in a real-world setting.

Eye movements add a constant displacement to the visual scene, altering the retinal-image velocity. Therefore, in order to recover the real world motion, eye-movement effects must be compensated. If full compensation occurs, the perceived speed of a moving object should be the same regardless of whether the eye is stationary or moving. Using a pursue-fixate procedure in a perceptual matching paradigm, we found that eye movements systematically bias the perceived speed of the distal stimulus, indicating a lack of compensation. Speed judgments depended on the interaction between the distal stimulus size and the eye velocity relative to the distal stimulus motion. When the eyes and distal stimulus moved in the same direction, speed judgments of the distal stimulus approximately matched its retinal-image motion. When the eyes and distal stimulus moved in the opposite direction, speed judgments depended on the stimulus size. For small sizes, perceived speed was typically overestimated. For large sizes, perceived speed was underestimated. Results are explained in terms of retinal-extraretinal interactions and correlate with recent neurophysiological findings.

The present study tested the hypothesis that nondominant-eye influences on lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) neurons affect the processing of spatial and contrast information from the dominant eye. To do this, we determined the effects of stimulating the nondominant eye at its optimal spatial frequency on the responses of LGN cells to sine-wave gratings of different spatial frequency and contrast presented to the dominant eye. Detailed testing was carried out on 49 cells that had statistically significant responses to stimulation of the nondominant eye alone.Spatial-frequency response functions to nondominant-eye stimulation indicated that the responses were spatially tuned, as reported previously (Guido et al., 1989). Optimal spatial frequencies through the nondominant eye were significantly correlated with the optimal spatial frequencies through the dominant eye (r = 0.54; P < 0.0001), and the optimal spatial frequencies were fairly similar for the two eyes.Nondominant-eye stimulation changed the maximal amplitude of the fundamental (Fl) response to dominant-eye stimulation for only about 45% (22 of 49) of the cells that responded to nondominant-eye stimulation alone. The response vs. contrast function through the dominant eye was altered for 73% of the cells (51% independent of spatial frequency). Three types of effects were observed: a change in the initial slope of the response vs. contrast function (contrast gain), a change in the response amplitude at which saturation occurred, or an overall change in response at all contrasts. The incidence of these changes was similar for X and Y cells in LGN layers A, Al, and C (only four W cells were tested).Nondominant-eye stimulation had little or no effect on the sizes or sensitivities of the receptive-field centers or surrounds for the dominant eye. In addition, nondominant-eye stimulation had little or no effect on optimal spatial frequency, spatial resolution, or the bandwidth of spatial-frequency contrast sensitivity curves for the dominant eye.Possible functions of binocular interactions in the LGN are considered. The present results suggest a role in interocular contrast-gain control. Interocular contrast differences can occur before the acquisition of binocular fusion, when the two eyes are viewing different aspects of a visual stimulus. Psychophysical and physiological studies suggest that an interocular mechanism exists to maintain relatively constant binocular interactions despite differences in interocular contrast. The present results suggest that at least part of this mechanism occurs in the LGN.

To determine whether speed discrimination improves when the retinal image is stabilized against the effects of eye movements, thresholds were measured under stabilized and normal viewing conditions. In the normal viewing conditions, eye movements were recorded and used to estimate retinal-image speeds. Stimulus reference speed for sinusoidal gratings varied from 0.5 to 8.0 deg/sec. Results showed that speed discrimination thresholds, expressed as Weber ratios, decreased with increasing stimulus speed for both the normal and stabilized viewing conditions. Stabilized viewing thresholds were higher than normal viewing thresholds only at the slowest stimulus reference speed. However, when speed discrimination thresholds were expressed as a function of the estimated retinal speed, there was no difference in thresholds for the stabilized and normal viewing conditions. A retinal-image model, whereby speed discrimination depends on retinal-image motion, explains the results.

We evaluated the hypothesis that smooth pursuit eye movements affect speed discrimination thresholds of distal stimuli because they alter the retinal image speed. Subjects judged speed differences of sine-wave gratings while they simultaneously pursued a superimposed moving bar. Speed discrimination thresholds were measured, under conditions of controlled eye movements, for grating speeds of 0.5 and 2.0 deg/sec across a range of eye velocities. Thresholds were stimulated using a Monte Carlo method based on the retinal speed hypothesis, and the simulation predictions were compared to the psychophysically determined thresholds. The simulation results provided a good match to the psychophysical data for conditions where the eye moved at a slower speed than the grating, regardless of whether the eye moved in the same or opposite direction. However, when the eye moved at a faster speed than the grating in the same direction, the psychophysical thresholds were significantly higher than predicted by the simulation. Control experiments and analyses rule out explanations based on relative motion cues, saccadic involvement, and attentional demands.