Journal of Eye Movement Research

19 pages, 1339 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Effects of Emotion and Perspective on Remembering Events: An Eye-Tracking Study

by Çiğdem Gülçay and Banu Cangöz

J. Eye Mov. Res. 2016, 9(2), 1-19; https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.9.2.4 - 23 Feb 2016

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 60

The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of the emotional content of an event and participants’ perspective on the memory and eye-tracking measurements for central and peripheral de-tails. The data have been collected from 130 undergraduate male students (18–33 ages). Three series of seven different emotional thematic photographs (positive, negative, neutral) were used. Participants were subjected to only one of the three series, either in his own perspective condition or observer perspective condition. During the presentation of thematic photograph series participants’ eye movements were re-corded. All analysis for memory and eye-tracking measurements were carried out with 3 (Emotional Content: Positive, Negative, Neutral) X 2 (Participants’ perspective: Own perspective, observer perspec-tive) between-subjects factorial ANOVA. The results indicated that although central and peripheral de-tails took almost equal attention in both negative and neutral events, only details of the negative event was remembered better. In addition, when compared to negative and neutral events participants looked longer at positive event’s central details as well as peripheral details, only details of negative event were remembered better. Consequently, memory enhancement effect occured only in negative emotional event both for central and peripheral details, even though participants paid less or equal attention these details. In addition to effects of emotion, it was seen that like autobiographical memory (Nigro and Neisser, 1983) participants’ perspective has also an effect on event memory and attention measured by eye-tracking. According to eye-tracking results looking with his own perspective to the event causes narrowing of attention while looking with observer’s perspective to event causes extending of attention. In memory results it was seen that participants in his own perspective condition remembered central details better than participants in the observer condition. In conclusion, it is observed that enhanced memory for neg-ative emotional event can occur independently of attention, so it could be said that attention is not suffi-cient by itself to remember an event with details, emotional dimension of the event has a decisive role. Additionally, perspective have an effect on attention as well as event memory. Full article

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8 pages, 5266 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Social Context Modulates Basic Properties of Oculomotor Control

by Alexander Strukelj, Tom Foulsham and Marcus Nyström

J. Eye Mov. Res. 2016, 9(2), 1-8; https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.9.2.5 - 23 Feb 2016

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 64

Abstract

Experiments performed in a lab are often considered generalizable over both people and social settings. The problems with generalizing over different groups of people are well known, but it is only recently that changes in behavior depending on the social setting have been examined. Large changes in behavior can be seen in trivial cognitive tasks, depending on whether the participant is alone or if other people are present. However, there are very few studies which have measured eye movements in social settings. In this paper, we used the antisaccade task to test whether basic parameters of oculomotor control are sensitive to the size of an experimental group. Seventy participants conducted 48 antisaccade trials in groups of one to seven people in a classroom equipped with multiple eye trackers. The results show that for horizontal saccades, but not for vertical saccades, participants make significantly more antisaccade errors when the group size become larger. The group size did however not significantly predict a change in antisaccade latency. These results are in line with a number of recent studies on social attention showing that the mere presence of other people in the room can modulate several aspects of performance, and show that behavior in a lab might not be easily generalizable to everyday life or social situations. Finally, from a methodological viewpoint, the results show that the group size should be considered when testing participants in a social setting. Full article

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13 pages, 717 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Saccade Latency and Fixation Stability: Repeatability and Reliability

by Gro Horgen Vikesdal and Trine Langaas

J. Eye Mov. Res. 2016, 9(2), 1-13; https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.9.2.3 - 17 Feb 2016

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 82

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the repeatability and reliability of saccadic latency and fix-ation stability as a function of sighting-dominance and contact lens wear. Eye movements were recorded in 12 healthy adults who performed a prosaccade and a fixation task in four conditions; baseline, retest, non-sighting eye viewing and plano contact lens wear. The re-sults showed that saccadic latency and fixation stability (indexed via logBCEA) have good internal consistency, reliability and repeatability, which are not influenced by sighting-dom-inance or contact lens wear. For standard deviation of eye position, internal consistency was low to moderate. The results also indicated that the non-sighting eye is slightly less stable than the sighting eye and that wearing a contact lens decreases precision. Full article

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16 pages, 799 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Detection of Moving Point Symbols on Cartographic Backgrounds

by Vassilios Krassanakis, Vassiliki Filippakopoulou and Byron Nakos

J. Eye Mov. Res. 2016, 9(2), 1-16; https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.9.2.2 - 13 Feb 2016

Cited by 17 | Viewed by 73

Abstract

The present paper presents the performance of an experimental cartographic study towards the examination of the minimum duration threshold required for the detection by the central vision of a moving point symbol on cartographic backgrounds. The examined threshold is investigated using backgrounds with discriminant levels of information. The experimental process is based on the collection (under free viewing conditions) and the analysis of eye movement recordings. The computation of fixation derived statistical metrics allows the calculation of the examined threshold as well as the study of the general visual reaction of map users. The critical duration threshold calculated within the present study corresponds to a time span around 400msec. The results of the analysis indicate meaningful evidences about these issues while the suggested approach can be applied towards the examination of perception thresholds related to changes occurred on dynamic stimuli. Full article

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9 pages, 2392 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Anticipation of Physical Causality Guides Eye Movements

by Kim Wende, Laetitia Theunissen and Marcus Missal

J. Eye Mov. Res. 2016, 9(2), 1-9; https://doi.org/10.16910/jemr.9.2.1 - 8 Feb 2016

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 57

Abstract

Causality is a unique feature of human perception. We present here a behavioral investigation of the influence of physical causality during visual pursuit of object collisions. Pursuit and saccadic eye movements of human subjects were recorded during ocular pursuit of two concurrently launched targets, one that moved according to the laws of Newtonian mechanics (the causal target) and the other one that moved in a physically implausible direction (the non-causal target). We found that anticipation of collision evoked early smooth pursuit decelerations. Saccades to non-causal targets were hypermetric and had latencies longer than saccades to causal targets. In conclusion, before and after a collision of two moving objects the oculomotor system implicitly predicts upcoming physically plausible target trajectories. Full article

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J. Eye Mov. Res., Volume 9, Issue 2 (February 2016) – 5 articles

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