In what ways do eye movements contribute to everyday activities?

Abstract

Two recent studies have investigated the relations of eye and hand movements in extended food preparation tasks, and here the results are compared. The tasks could be divided into a series of actions performed on objects. The eyes usually reached the next object in the sequence before any sign of manipulative action, indicating that eye movements are planned into the motor pattern and lead each action. The eyes usually fixated the same object throughout the action upon it, although they often moved on to the next object in the sequence before completion of the preceding action. The specific roles of individual fixations could be identified as locating (establishing the locations of objects for future use), directing (establishing target direction prior to contact), guiding (supervising the relative movements of two or three objects) and checking (establishing whether some particular condition is met, prior to the termination of an action). It is argued that, at the beginning of each action, the oculomotor system is supplied with the identity of the required object, information about its location, and instructions about the nature of the monitoring required during the action. The eye movements during this kind of task are nearly all to task-relevant objects, and thus their control is seen as primarily 'top-down', and influenced very little by the 'intrinsic salience' of objects.

Sources of variability in interceptive movements

“…Here again all 1058 trials without missing data are included. When performing everyday tasks our eyes are usually directed at the object or objects that are relevant for what we are doing at that moment Johansson et al 2001;Land et al 1999;Land and Hayhoe 2001;Triesch et al 2003), or toward positions at which critical information is expected to become available (e.g., information about how a ball bounces; Land and Furneaux 1997;Land and McLeod 2000). We could therefore tentatively conclude from Fig.…”

Gaze allocation in a dynamic situation: Effects of social status and speaking

“…In some circumstances, these stimuli may be best described by their low level features-salient items such as a bright object on a dark background are particularly likely to be fixated (Foulsham & Underwood, 2007;Itti & Koch, 2000). However, in more realistic and complex situations, where people look is closely related to their actions, goals and cognitions in each environmental context (Ballard & Sprague, 2005;Land & Hayhoe, 2001;Yarbus, 1967).…”

“…The guidance of eye movements in natural scenes is often studied using static images (Foulsham & Underwood, 2008;Henderson, 2003), but it is not always clear how well this research transfers to the real world, where individuals and the visual environment are often moving, and where particular objects need to be fixated at certain times. In contrast, studies of gaze allocation in real world activities have typically emphasized the temporal patterning of eye movements in relation to action (Land & Hayhoe, 2001). For example, people look toward an object a few seconds before manipulating it, and they then move their gaze to the next task in the sequence.…”

Alcohol Badly Affects Eye Movements Linked to Steering, Providing for Automatic in-Car Detection of Drink Driving

“…In diverse everyday activities (Land and Furneaux, 1997;Land and Hayhoe, 2001), including walking (Hollands et al, 1995;Hollands and Marple-Horvat, 2001), reaching to an object (Herman et al, 1981), playing a musical instrument (Sloboda, 1974;Furneaux and Land, 1999) or ball games (Land and Furneaux, 1997), eye movements precede other actions. Driving is a classic example, in which eye movements anticipate motion of the steering wheel when negotiating a winding road.…”