Eye Fixations and Latency in a Simplified Search Situation

Abstract

A technique was developed for photographing simultaneously a stimulus field and the points on the field where Ss fixated while searching for a particular stimulus element. The technique used a beam of infrared light reflected from the cornea. The stimulus elements were a single row of solid black circles, with a solid black triangle typically replacing one of the circles. The number of elements in the row and the position of the triangle in the row appeared in a random order from trial to trial. The experiment measured the number of eye fixations made during the search; it also measured the latency of the locating response. The principal result was that these two measures corresponded closely when plotted against the position of the critical element in the row.