Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050109

Authors: Bo Fu Jonathan Peña Oscar Arenas Russell Harral

Instrument Landing System (ILS) approaches impose distinct visual demands across two operational segments, including (i) an intermediate approach segment prior to the final approach fix (FAF), during which pilots intercept and track the localizer while complying with published altitude restrictions and the glideslope-intercept altitude, and (ii) the final approach (FA) segment from the FAF to decision altitude/decision height, during which pilots precisely maintain both localizer and glideslope guidance. Using eye tracking, this study examines segment-specific scan behavior during simulated ILS approaches in low visibility conditions performed by 36 licensed pilots in a Cessna 172 equipped with G1000 avionics. The study results show that successful approaches were characterized by suppressed external viewing, more compact scans, and more organized return-loop patterns, suggesting that effective ILS scan discipline depends not only on looking at task-relevant instruments, but also on organizing those scans into phase-appropriate and functionally integrated sequences. By linking gaze allocation, scan dispersion, and scan sequence patterns to approach outcomes, this study demonstrates how eye tracking can provide segment-sensitive markers of instrument-scan quality. We further propose candidate scan-assessment metrics that may contribute to more precise and objective simulator debriefing, as well as future flightdeck-interface concepts that may support disciplined cross-checking without increasing pilot workload.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050108

Authors: Anne Guérin-Dugué Mike Salomone Aurélie Campagne

Understanding how visual exploration evolves over time during complex decision making remains challenging, as the dynamics of underlying cognitive processes are difficult to observe. Hidden Markov models are widely used to model eye movement sequences, but their assumption of stationary transition probabilities limits their ability to identify successive phases. This study investigated whether Switching Hidden Markov Models (SHMMs), trained only on fixation positions, could segment visual exploration during an obstacle-avoidance task requiring a left/right decision. Individual SHMMs with two or three high-level (HI) states were trained without using reaction times. HI states were characterized through transition-matrix variability, saliency maps, cumulative dwell times in regions of interest, and their association with reaction times. Both models produced temporal segmentations consistent with decision making. Early HI states showed greater interindividual variability and exploration focused on obstacles, whereas later states were more homogeneous and reflected decision confirmation followed by reorientation toward the center of the screen. The transition to the final HI state of the three-state model best explained reaction time. Furthermore, the average log-likelihood of the Viterbi state restoration improved the fit quality of this explanatory model, indicating that SHMM confidence provided complementary behavioral information. These findings suggest that SHMMs trained only on fixation positions can identify phases broadly consistent with those traditionally observed in the decision-making process, such as early evidence accumulation and late decision confirmation.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050107

Authors: Dong Jin Mengxian Wu Ruishi Wang Yiping Li Xiaoxing Yan

For age-friendly furniture surface design, the color of a TV-cabinet finish affects not only visual comfort in the living room but also older users’ aesthetic preferences, perceived harmony, and emotional acceptance of furniture products. To clarify how older adults perceive hue, value, and the dominant–secondary area relationship in two-color decorative finishes for TV cabinets, this study used a digital model with a unified form and constructed surface color schemes varying in hue, value, and two-color dominance. The experiment contained two parts. Experiment 1 examined the differences in subjective evaluation and visual attention under colored hue × value conditions. Experiment 2 examined the changes in preference and attention under dominant/secondary color relationship × colored hue × value conditions. Thirty-five older participants completed an eye-tracking experiment and a seven-point semantic-differential questionnaire. The results showed that: (1) a three-item aesthetic scale comprising pleasure, simplicity, and order showed good internal consistency in both experiments; (2) hue had a significant effect on subjective pleasantness, while significant interactions indicated that preference also depended on specific combinations of hue, value, and color relationship—yellow showed relatively high descriptive pleasantness ratings under the tested conditions; and (3) the viewing duration varied with the experimental color factors, whereas no statistically significant associations were detected between subjective pleasantness and either the viewing duration or the fixation count under the tested conditions, suggesting that visual-attention measures and subjective preferences provide complementary rather than equivalent information. These findings provide preliminary empirical evidence from subjective evaluation and eye-movement data for further exploration of color configurations in age-friendly furniture decorative finishes and coating surfaces.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050106

Authors: Xinxin Wang Jiaji Gao

Whether a well-organized scene facilitates visual search may depend on when in the search process the benefit is expressed. We tested this possibility in a virtual-office task in which 48 adults searched for targets varying in salience. Salience was manipulated between participants, whereas layout (grid, clustered, or random) and clutter (low, medium, or high) varied within participants. Mouse responses and eye position (120 Hz) were collected across 1296 target-present trials. Accuracy was broadly comparable across conditions, but reaction time (RT), time to first fixation (TTFF), fixation duration in the Target AOI, and fixation duration in the Clutter AOI each showed a three-way interaction. The transition data were particularly informative under high clutter. For grid layouts, clutter-to-target transitions occurred on 47.3% of transitions, clutter-to-clutter self-transitions on 20.5%, and the target was first reached after 0.89 intervening transitions on average. The respective values for random layouts were 11.2%, 64.2%, and 6.39. Thus, the benefit of the grid was not consistently present at initial target capture. It became most evident in the way gaze was redirected among regions as the search unfolded. Spatial regularity therefore seems to limit later search costs by making attentional reallocation and gaze-path correction more efficient.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050105

Authors: Horacio Rostro-Gonzalez Ana M. S. Gonzalez-Acosta Victor H. Jimenez-Arredondo

Understanding how visual structure shapes attentional allocation is central to models of perceptual processing. Less is known about how formal properties like harmony and complexity shape exploration independent of salience or semantic content. This study examined how controlled structural variations relate to attention, facial engagement, and subjective judgment using eye-tracking and webcam-based facial coding. Participants (N=40) viewed stimuli derived from a common geometric base, manipulated into three conditions: high harmony (symmetrical, low complexity), high complexity (asymmetrical, disorganized), and structured complexity (high complexity with underlying order). Eye movements and facial expressions were recorded during free viewing. Metrics included time to first fixation, fixation duration, number of fixations, scanpath entropy, spatial dispersion, and facial-coding indices (neutral, happy, and surprise expression, and the ambient/focal coefficient K). None of the eye-tracking or facial-coding metrics differed significantly across conditions; given that the study was powered to detect only medium-to-large effects, this indicates no detectable difference under the present webcam-based, brief-exposure design rather than evidence that visual structure has no effect on attention. Subjective complexity ratings differed robustly across conditions, surviving correction for multiple comparisons: unexpectedly, the high-complexity condition was rated as less complex than the harmony and structured-complexity conditions, indicating the intended manipulation did not translate into perceived complexity as designed. A nominally significant difference in pleasantness ratings did not survive this correction. Using repeated-measures correlation to account for the non-independence of within-participant observations, scanpath entropy showed a nominal negative association with pleasantness that did not survive correction for multiple comparisons, and the coefficient K showed a weaker and partly inconsistent pattern of association with independent oculomotor indices than initial uncorrected analyses suggested. These findings indicate that, in the present study, formal visual structure shaped subjective complexity judgments more robustly than it shaped overt attentional or facial-affective engagement, a pattern consistent with—though not conclusive proof of—a broader dissociation between evaluative and attentional responses reported in face perception and developmental aesthetics research. Beyond this substantive finding, we report in detail how accounting for repeated-measures non-independence and applying an explicit multiplicity strategy changed our statistical conclusions, offering a worked methodological example for similarly structured webcam-based eye-tracking and facial-coding studies.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050104

Authors: Amelia Beatson Anna Metzger Matteo Toscani

Human vision is profoundly non-uniform. Spatial resolution, contrast sensitivity, colour discrimination decrease, and the appearance of visual features become increasingly distorted with retinal eccentricity, yet visual experience appears remarkably rich and stable across the entire visual field. This apparent paradox has been a central challenge in vision science: how can a perceptually rich world emerge from a sensory system that samples only a small fraction of the environment with high precision? We argue that cognitive biases alone may be insufficient to explain the apparent richness of peripheral vision and review evidence suggesting that perceptual processes may also contribute. Information sampled in central vision can be extrapolated to peripheral appearance, while prior knowledge and learned regularities allow the visual system to infer missing or distorted peripheral information. These processes operate within the constraints of active vision, where eye movements selectively sample task-relevant information rather than building a complete detailed representation of the scene. We propose that the interaction between centre-to-periphery extrapolation and learned predictions may contribute to rich peripheral experience, specially where we direct attention, allowing the visual system to maintain a coherent and useful representation of the world.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050103

Authors: Mehmet Özalp Hicran Halaç Nuray Özkaraca Özalp Fikret Bademci

Eye tracking is an interdisciplinary research method used in many fields, including engineering, architecture, health sciences, psychology, marketing, and human–computer interaction. Although it is often perceived as a modern research method, its origins can be traced back to the nineteenth century. This study aims to identify the developmental trends and thematic structure of eye-tracking research from its early history to the present. Bibliometric analysis was used to evaluate studies in the field of eye-tracking. A total of 45,230 publications identified in the Scopus database using eye-tracking search terms were analyzed. The most productive authors, institutions, countries, publication sources, keywords, and thematic trends were examined using Bibliometrix in the RStudio environment. The findings show substantial growth in eye-tracking research during 2020–2025, with 22,130 publications recorded during this period. The analysis also shows that the share of eye-tracking publications in total Scopus output increased from 0.0134% in 2000 to 0.0963% in 2025, while the search sensitivity analysis demonstrates that terminology choices substantially affect the size and composition of the retrieved corpus. Computer Science accounted for the largest share of publications. The United States had the highest number of publications. Based on Scopus affiliation records, the University of California system had the highest publication count among the institutional structures identified in the dataset, although this figure may reflect the combined representation of different campuses and affiliated units and should therefore not be interpreted as a direct comparison of individual campuses. In addition to fundamental concepts such as eye movements and visual attention, themes such as EEG, virtual reality, augmented reality, computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning have become more prominent in recent years. Overall, the findings reveal academic orientations and temporal trends in eye-tracking research. They also provide a framework for potential future research directions.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050102

Authors: Michel Cara Divna Mitrovic

This study examined how regressive fixations relate to temporal anticipation and unfolding temporal dynamics during music sight-reading. Eye-movement, performance, and respiratory data were recorded from 28 flutists performing three scores differing in musical and metrical structure; performance recordings were MIDI-aligned with eye-movement and respiratory measures. Regressive fixations were defined as fixations following regressions toward previously viewed score notes. A participant-grouped random forest model explained 60% of the out-of-fold variance in regressive-fixation count, highlighting fixation count, mean fixation duration, and time-based eye–hand span as leading predictors. Mixed-effects analyses showed that time-based eye–hand span was the most consistent predictor, while performance duration and mean fixation duration provided additional information. Rhythmic accuracy moderated the relationship between temporal anticipation and regressive-fixation count, with a stronger positive association in more accurate performances (β = 1.062, 95% CI [0.282, 1.842], p = 0.008). This interaction remained significant when regressive-fixation count was modeled relative to performance duration and after controlling for mean fixation duration. An additional analysis found no evidence that shorter fixation durations attenuated the association between more regressions and longer relative performance duration. These findings suggest that regressive fixations are associated with temporal anticipation during music sight-reading and may inform cross-domain research on the role of regressive eye movements in reading comprehension.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050101

Authors: Melissa Gurdián-Franceschi Miguel Martín-Pascual Celia Andreu-Sánchez

The increasing use of accelerated playback in digital media consumption has raised questions regarding its effects on viewers’ perception. This study examined whether playback speed in TV news videos (1× vs. 2×) affects viewers’ subjective responses, memory performance, and eye-tracking behavior. We presented news videos under either normal or accelerated playback conditions to a total of N = 146 participants. Our results showed that accelerated playback was associated with lower valence, reduced perceived comprehension, lower credibility evaluations, poorer memory performance, and lower recommendation-intention ratings. In contrast, arousal ratings were higher under accelerated playback conditions. Eye-tracking measures revealed differences in visual attention patterns between conditions, including fixation behavior and attention allocated to lower-third captions. However, the fixation-rate difference should be interpreted cautiously, as increased stimulus velocity may have influenced fixation classification. These findings suggest that accelerated playback was associated with differences in audience evaluation and viewing behavior during news consumption.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050100

Authors: Sophia Castro Nancy O. Mahfouz Simrat Renu Kathiana Jeanty Elana Safonova Doris Prela Ola Abozid Ayesha Mulla Josey M. Spiers Robert G. Alexander

Ophthalmic disorders cause pathological abnormalities in fixational movements. Across disorders, recent studies demonstrate that fixation can be disrupted, often with reported changes in stability and other oculomotor dynamics as the conditions progress. Some of these changes are functionally linked to reduced visual acuity, degraded reading performance, and impaired binocular function. In this narrative review, we synthesize recent work on fixational eye movements and fixation instability in ophthalmic disease. We argue that fixational measures may provide research biomarkers and clinical correlates of disease progression. These metrics could eventually contribute to treatment monitoring applications. The development of accessible and non-invasive eye-tracking tools could enhance clinical interventions. Continued progress will depend on establishing robust normative datasets and determining which oculomotor metrics provide reliable clinical information across disease states.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050099

Authors: Evgenia Psarra Vassilios Krassanakis Anastasios L. Kesidis

Eye tracking technologies have become increasingly accessible through webcam-based solutions such as WebGazer, enabling large-scale and low-cost experimentation. However, their performance remains sensitive to several experimental and device-related parameters. This study presents a controlled experimental framework developed to systematically evaluate WebGazer under configurable experimental conditions. Within this framework, we design and implement a controlled experimental protocol to investigate the effect of key parameters, including (i) joint calibration/evaluation point-density configuration, (ii) evaluation-point distribution, (iii) target presentation duration, (iv) stimulus color, and (v) stimulus (target) size. WebGazer’s performance is assessed using both device-pixel spatial error metrics and angular error (delta), providing complementary measures of gaze accuracy. Results from 20 participants show that denser point configurations were associated with lower mean spatial error, from 1383 to 1009 device pixels, and lower mean angular error, from 13.556 to 10.322 degrees, within the tested conditions. Across the aggregated condition summaries, the joint point-density configuration showed the widest spatial-error range, whereas target presentation duration showed the widest angular-error range. Taken together, these two factors displayed the clearest descriptive differences, followed by evaluation-point distribution. Pseudo-random layouts were associated with moderately higher errors than fixed layouts. In contrast, visual properties such as color and size showed comparatively smaller and less consistent differences, with stimulus size displaying a non-monotonic pattern. Overall, temporal and calibration-related settings showed the clearest descriptive associations with WebGazer performance, while visual design choices showed smaller differences. This study provides a practical quantitative framework for systematically assessing webcam-based eye tracking systems under realistic usage conditions.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050098

Authors: Madara Alecka Evita Serpa Viktorija Arhipenko Linda Krauze Ilze Ceple

Wearable eye-tracking devices are primarily used for eye movement analysis in real-world environments. Owing to their increasing availability and ability to provide measurements with high ecological validity, it is important to determine whether they can also be applied to gaze fixation analysis involving screen-based stimuli. This study evaluated the performance of the wearable eye tracker Pupil Labs Neon for gaze fixation analysis under controlled laboratory conditions by comparing it with the screen-based Tobii Pro Fusion. A total of 46 participants were enrolled in the study. Eye-tracker accuracy was assessed across different gaze directions, whereas fixation stability was evaluated exclusively during central fixation. Tobii Pro Fusion demonstrated significantly higher overall accuracy compared to Pupil Labs Neon. Notably, the accuracy of both devices was affected by stimulus background. Furthermore, the Tobii Pro Fusion showed significantly better accuracy at central positions than at peripheral gaze positions; in contrast the Pupil Labs Neon exhibited no significant variations in relation to stimulus eccentricity. Finally, no significant differences in fixation stability during central fixation were observed between the two devices. Considering its significantly higher overall accuracy, Tobii Pro Fusion appears better suited for gaze fixation analysis in screen-based tasks, especially within the central positions, whereas Pupil Labs Neon may provide more stable data quality across different gaze positions.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050097

Authors: Hakile Resulbegoviq Valentina Hlebec Mirjana Pejić Bach Irina Stamatović

Generative artificial intelligence increasingly produces text, images, feedback, summaries, advertisements, synthetic faces, and audiovisual content evaluated alongside human-produced material. This systematic review synthesized comparative eye-tracking evidence on visual attention, cognitive processing, and engagement with AI-generated content. Searches of Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed yielded 896 records; 23 studies met the eligibility criteria and contributed 778 participants in the review-relevant eye-tracking components. The evidence covered textual, static visual, audiovisual, and interactive outputs. Across heterogeneous designs and tasks, no modality-independent gaze pattern emerged. AI-generated material sometimes attracted more focal inspection, sometimes received less task-relevant attention, and often redistributed gaze across interface elements. Where supported by task characteristics or complementary outcomes, longer viewing was more often associated with processing difficulty, uncertainty, or checking than with preference. Generated summaries supported learning in some settings, whereas realistic synthetic media remained difficult to identify despite focused inspection. Methodological appraisal identified recurrent limitations in sampling, stimulus matching, confounder control, eye-tracking reporting, and documentation of model versions, prompts, generation settings, and output selection. Observed gaze differences were context-dependent and varied with modality, task, comparator, source belief, expertise, output quality, and measurement choices. Standardized reporting and stronger links between gaze and functional outcomes are needed for cumulative inference.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050096

Authors: Nikola Milosavljević Miloš Panjevac Milica Janković Vanja Ković

The Concealed Information Test (CIT) detects whether an individual recognizes crime-relevant information, and eye tracking has been proposed as a non-invasive method for detecting this recognition. It remains unclear, however, whether individuals who are motivated to conceal their knowledge can voluntarily control their gaze and thereby undermine the test’s validity. We developed a novel free-viewing, parallel-presentation eye-movement-based CIT and administered it to 75 participants randomly assigned to three groups: Innocent, Informed Innocent, and Guilty. For each participant, twelve eye-tracking measures were calculated as differential (crime-relevant minus control) scores and analyzed using four supervised classifiers under a participant-wise, leave-two-out cross-validation, with accuracy reported at both the trial and participant levels. Cumulative dwell- and duration-based measures, together with glance and fixation counts, carried most of the discriminative signal. The classifiers demonstrated high accuracy when distinguishing between the naive and knowledgeable but non-concealing individuals, as well as between knowledgeable non-concealing individuals and culpable individuals. However, classification performance fell to chance-level probability when distinguishing naive and culpable individuals. Thus, participants who were motivated to avoid detection markedly reduced their distinctive eye-movement signature with voluntary gaze control, becoming indistinguishable from truly naive individuals. We discuss methodological implications for designing eye-movement-based CITs that exhibit greater resilience against voluntary gaze modulation.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050095

Authors: Ashley Abraham Jocelyn Folk

Skilled readers are thought to rely on bottom-up processing to activate word meanings in long-term memory from their form (i.e., spelling or sound) in a process described as ‘context-free’ lexical processing. However, other research suggests skilled readers recognize words faster when they appear in predictable and/or plausible contexts, despite efficient bottom-up processing. Research on individual differences in skilled comprehension suggests skilled readers only use context to support word recognition when bottom-up processing is slow. Therefore, highly skilled readers may not rely on context, but less-skilled readers may continue to rely on context during word recognition due to poor bottom-up processing. The current study investigated whether individual differences in lexical quality would influence contextual processing during word recognition. Participants’ eye movements were tracked as they read sentences containing either a high-frequency (e.g., baby) or low-frequency (e.g., elbow) target word preceded by either a related prime word (mother–baby) or an unrelated control word (teeth–elbow). Results show relatedness had a significant effect on readers across the range of lexical knowledge; however, the specific effect depended on both vocabulary and target word frequency. The results suggest that context supports word recognition and comprehension when readers have adequate vocabulary.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19050094

Authors: Ileok Jung Ji-Soo Kim Moon-Ho Park

Donepezil, a cholinesterase inhibitor widely used in dementia, can be associated with saccadic oscillations (SO), but their time course and clinical relevance are unclear. In this prospective observational study, 18 patients with dementia underwent video-oculography at baseline (V0), one month (V1), and three months (V2) after initiation or dose escalation of donepezil. SO were counted over a single 30 s recording during visual fixation and in darkness, expressed as events/30 s. Dizziness was assessed with the Dizziness Handicap Inventory (DHI) and the Vestibular Disorders Activities of Daily Living (VADL) scale. Timepoints were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and within-patient associations by repeated-measures correlation (rmcorr). SO with fixation increased from a median of 0.0 (interquartile range 0.0–1.0) events/30 s at V0 to 13.5 (7.2–15.8) at V1 (unadjusted p = 0.008, adjusted p = 0.023), then declined, but the difference from baseline lost statistical significance after multiple-comparison adjustment at V2 (6.5 [0.0–11.5]; unadjusted p = 0.031, adjusted p = 0.063). SO without fixation did not change (all p > 0.12). On rmcorr, SO without fixation was associated with the VADL (r = 0.59, p = 0.005) but neither measure was associated with the DHI. A transient, fixation-specific increase in SO was observed, peaking at one month and only partially resolved by three months; it correlated with functional disability rather than subjective handicap, suggesting that video-oculography warrants further study as a potential pharmacodynamic correlate of cholinergic drug effect in dementia.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040093

Authors: Angeliki Gleni Sotiris Plainis Angeliki Mouzaki Miltiadis Tsilimbaris Panagiota Dimitropoulou Panagiotis Simos

Reading speed, a core indicator of reading performance, requires efficient oculomotor behavior. While well-documented in adults, the contribution of eye movements to children’s silent reading speed and grade-related changes remain underspecified. Furthermore, the distributional properties of fixation durations have rarely been examined in children. This study investigates how changes in eye-movement parameters associate with individual differences in children’s silent reading speed. The eye movements of 194 typically developing Greek-speaking students (Grades 3–6) were recorded during silent reading of short passages. An Ex-Gaussian distributional analysis was applied to fixation durations, alongside traditional measures of mean fixation number, fixation duration, and saccade amplitude. Language and cognitive abilities were also evaluated. Silent reading speed increased with grade, driven by fewer and shorter fixations, and longer saccades. After accounting for age, vocabulary and cognitive measures, eye-movement parameters increased the explained variance in silent reading speed to 80% (adjusted R2 = 0.800) in the full sample (N = 194). The Ex-Gaussian parameter τ was an independent predictor, distinct from mean fixation duration. Finally, age significantly moderated the association between forward fixations and silent reading speed. These findings indicate that oculomotor behavior is independently linked to children’s silent reading speed across primary school years, as captured both by conventional and distributional oculomotor parameters.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040092

Authors: Kexin Chen Junfeng Li Mo Chen

Level 3 automated driving necessitates rapid driver reengagement following a takeover request, making human–machine interface design critical for safety. As a sensor-based in-vehicle interface, the augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD) integrates real-time environmental sensing with visual information delivery, yet how different information presentation strategies influence driver visual attention during takeover remains underexplored. We examined the effects of presentation form (static/dynamic) and presentation timing (concurrent/progressive) using a 2 × 2 within-subject design. In the experiment, twenty-one licensed drivers viewed prerecorded automated driving takeover scenarios. Eye tracking measured mean fixation duration, mean saccade amplitude, time to first fixation, and fixation count, while ratings assessed usability, acceptance, and intention comprehension. Progressive presentation significantly reduced all eye-tracking measures and improved perceived usability ratings compared with concurrent presentation. This pattern indicates more concentrated and orderly gaze allocation and is consistent with lower visual-search and information-integration demands. However, the lower fixation count may partly reflect reduced information exposure. Static presentation reduced mean fixation duration but showed no consistent overall advantage on the remaining measures. Significant form-by-timing interactions showed that progressive presentation reduced saccade amplitude and time to first fixation and improved intention comprehension under static, but not dynamic, presentation. Among the four combinations, static-progressive presentation yielded the most favorable overall pattern. Overall, presentation timing affected more measured outcomes than presentation form. These findings provide preliminary evidence that presentation form and presentation timing shape gaze behavior and subjective evaluations of AR-HUD takeover displays.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040091

Authors: Manuel Zaremski Barbara Deml

Manual disassembly is a key process in remanufacturing and circular-economy systems, yet it is often characterized by uncertainty, varying product conditions and non-standardized action sequences. Eye tracking provides a process-oriented methodology for examining how such tasks are visually guided, with implications for human behavior analysis, operator support, and automation design. The present study investigated the potential of specific eye and gaze metrics to reflect differences in task condition and process dynamics during human disassembly. These were analyzed using a dimension-based mixed-effect modeling approach, accounting for task condition, handcraft skill levels, and task duration across repeated observations within participants, addressing four dimensions: visual attention allocation, cognitive workload, scanpath structure, and gaze organization. The results showed that increased task uncertainty was most associated with shorter fixation durations, higher fixation rates, larger pupil diameters, and higher revisit rates, indicating intensified visual sampling, increased cognitive workload, and repeated checking behavior. No robust differences were observed between skill levels. A longer task duration, as an indirect proxy of less routine-like execution, was primarily reflected in fixation dynamics and scanpath structure, rather than in entropy or workload measures. The findings demonstrate the sensitivity of eye and gaze metrics to task uncertainty and process dynamics in disassembly.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040090

Authors: Spencer Ivy K. Hudson Guttman Trafton Drew Jeanine K. Stefanucci

It is widely proposed that perceptual expertise is characterized by an increased reliance on peripheral visual information during search, as described by Holistic Visual Processing (HVP) theory. HVP predicts that experts make longer saccades to construct a holistic representation of the visual scene and facilitate target detection. Our previous work challenged this prediction by showing that expert architects made shorter, rather than longer, saccades during visual search. The present study investigated how this atypical search strategy develops by comparing expert architects, intermediate architects, and naïve observers performing the same visual search task. Intermediate architects exhibited shorter saccades than naïve observers, but not to the extent observed in experts, while demonstrating search efficiency intermediate to the two groups. Analyses of the temporal organization of search further revealed that intermediate architects had already adopted the overall structure of the expert search strategy despite not yet exhibiting expert-level reductions in saccadic amplitude. These findings suggest that perceptual expertise in architecture develops through a layered progression in which the organization of visual search precedes the full refinement of eye movement behavior. More broadly, these findings suggest that eye movement research should interpret gaze metrics such as saccadic amplitude within the context of domain-specific task demands and developmental stage, while considering the temporal organization of search as an additional window into the emergence of perceptual expertise.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040089

Authors: Junho Cho Dokshin Lim

As generative AI chatbots become a primary information channel, users increasingly accept answers without verification, and citations can raise trust even when sources are irrelevant or fabricated. How source-attribution visualization shapes the visual preconditions of verification remains unknown: users can notice, read, or compare a source without clicking. This within-subjects eye-tracking study (N = 23; 92 trials) evaluated four attribution visualizations abstracted from commercial AI chatbots and rendered as simulated screens: inline component (sentence-end chips), card list (cards above the answer), side panel (adjacent panel), and raw hyperlink (bare URLs), combining gaze metrics, surveys, and interviews. Repeated-measures ANOVAs revealed strong layout effects on source discoverability and engagement, largely robust to sensitivity checks (the panel’s discovery latency was order-sensitive): the card list was discovered almost immediately, with the raw hyperlink last. Yet no self-reported measure differed detectably. The most frequently nominated format, the inline component, attracted about half the dwell time of the stand-alone formats, whose prolonged fixations suggested citation-to-text mapping cost rather than genuine engagement. This attention–preference gap means both must be measured jointly. We contribute a four-layout gaze-based comparison, a reproducible participant-level analysis workflow, and three design principles (pre-click identifiability, sentence-level claim–source mapping, and in situ preview) within a proposed two-stage attribution architecture.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040088

Authors: Yanzhao Li Jin Li Xiaona Zhang Hong Liang

General gaze following aims to infer the region attended to by a person within a natural scene and offers a computational perspective on visual attention and social scene understanding. Existing direction-guided methods usually reduce gaze direction to a single vector or spatial mask. This deterministic treatment can obscure directional ambiguity, discard coexisting candidate directions, and propagate early estimation errors to gaze target localization when head cues are weak or multiple targets are plausible. To address these limitations, we propose an uncertainty-aware framework based on Circular Direction Distribution Learning (CDDL) and Probabilistic Gaze Geometry Modeling (PGGM). CDDL represents gaze direction as a 72-bin circular probability distribution under von Mises soft supervision, thereby preserving neighboring directional hypotheses before target localization. Rather than predicting a target space distribution directly, PGGM aggregates the direction distribution into 18 groups and projects the retained hypotheses into cone-like spatial probability fields, allowing spatial tolerance to expand with distance while preserving a channel-wise direction-to-region representation. The full probability volume is fused with the RGB scene image at the input level and processed by a ResNet-50-FPN network for gaze heatmap prediction. Controlled experiments on GazeFollow demonstrate competitive localization and support the contribution of direction-distribution learning and channel-wise geometric projection. Zero-shot transfer, dataset-level uncertainty and failure analyses, efficiency measurements, and qualitative results further indicate interpretable behavior together with domain-dependent and computational trade-offs.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040087

Authors: Yukihiko Funaki Yukio Koriyama Ayano Nakagawa Ali Ozkes

This study investigates how strategic environments shape a decision maker’s reasoning processes by incorporating visual attention and cognitive engagement. Using eye-tracking methods within experimental guessing games featuring interior equilibria, we analyze how strategic complementarity and substitutability alter choice behavior and cognitive engagement. We find that while choices diverge further from equilibrium under strategic complementarity, eye gaze metrics—specifically fixation and transition measures—are consistent with more intensive cognitive engagement under strategic substitutability. Furthermore, by using a novel approach to measure strategic sophistication, we find that individuals with higher strategic aptitude exhibit higher levels of visual engagement with the payoff table. As strategic sophistication increases, the two distinct dimensions of attention build up sequentially rather than together, with attention to an individual’s own strategies strengthening prior to attention to their opponents’. These findings indicate that visual attention is shaped systematically by the strategic environment and are consistent with a sequential organization of reasoning that may underlie the strategic environment effect.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040086

Authors: Miharu Mihara Noriko Katayama Ken Kakeue Mitsuya Otsuka Kazuichi Maruyama Atsushi Hayashi

Background: This prospective observational study assessed acute changes in distance ocular deviation after brief smartphone viewing in young adults without manifest strabismus and identified factors associated with the magnitude of change. Methods: Fifty-nine healthy young adults without strabismus (aged 20–30 years; mean ± standard deviation, 23.2 ± 2.5 years) wore a head-mounted eye-tracking system and viewed a smartphone for 30 min. Ocular deviation angles at near and distance fixation were measured immediately before and after smartphone viewing. During smartphone viewing, eye-movement parameters and smartphone distance were continuously recorded. Results: Before smartphone viewing, the mean deviation angles were −6.2 ± 6.8Δ and −2.0 ± 2.8Δ at near and distance fixation, respectively (negative values indicate exodeviation). After smartphone viewing, deviation angles shifted toward less exodeviation, measuring −4.3 ± 6.6Δ and −1.1 ± 2.4Δ at near and distance fixation, respectively. The magnitude of exodeviation reduction was negatively correlated with baseline ocular deviation, indicating that individuals with larger pre-viewing exodeviation exhibited greater alignment shifts after smartphone viewing. Eye-movement analysis revealed that gaze movements of <30°/s accounted for 57.8% of detected gaze-movement events. Conclusions: Thirty minutes of smartphone viewing was followed by a reduction in exodeviation at near and distance fixation in young adults without manifest strabismus. Greater baseline exodeviation was associated with a larger reduction, and low-velocity gaze movements predominated.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040085

Authors: Kun Zhang Junling Kong Junhui Zhang Shuo Zhang Jingying Chen

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit atypical patterns of visual attention allocation and social-cue processing. Eye-tracking scanpath (ETSP) retains information about fixation points, saccade paths and their temporal changes in the form of images, providing an intuitive and computable data representation for analyzing ASD-related visual attention patterns. However, in ASD auxiliary identification studies, the same participant often generates multiple eye-tracking recordings or multiple visual representation samples. If participant independence is not properly considered during model evaluation, the training and test sets may share individualized eye-movement patterns from the same child. In such cases, the model may learn subject-specific characteristics rather than stable and transferable ASD-related visual attention features, leading to an overestimation of its recognition ability on unseen participants. To address this issue, we propose a Global–Local Collaborative Fusion Network (GLCF-Net) under a strict participant-independent splitting protocol. Specifically, the proposed method first maps ETSP images into patch token sequences through a shared Patch Embedding layer. A CNN-based local branch is then used to extract local trajectory morphology, path density, and spatial neighborhood structure, while a ViT-based global branch models cross-region gaze transitions and the overall attention distribution. Finally, a gated adaptive fusion module dynamically integrates local and global information to enhance the representation of stable visual attention features. In the primary repeated stratified five-fold participant-level evaluation, averaging the two out-of-fold probabilities for each participant yielded an Accuracy of 87.0% and a ROC-AUC of 93.7%; the original participant split, retained as a secondary analysis, yielded an Accuracy of 83.52% and a ROC-AUC of 90.27%. Under the reported frozen-backbone configurations, the model also showed a balanced pattern across Accuracy, Recall, and F1-score. These results characterize performance for unseen participants within the same dataset and acquisition conditions.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040084

Authors: Yingying Zhu Ming Liu Yinghuang Luo Xuanjia Ren Jinho Yim

Exhibit texts are commonly presented as labels or information panels near artworks to provide visitors with direct access to key exhibit information. Digital museums offer flexible and diverse ways to present artworks and communicate their cultural meanings. They also allow exhibit texts to be displayed in different formats, which may shape users’ reading behavior and cognitive experience. This study used a repeated-measures, within-subject design (N = 38) to compare three types of exhibit text presentation: environment-based, object-based, and user-based. Eye tracking, the NASA Task Load Index, and semi-structured interviews were used to examine the users’ visual attention patterns and cognitive load. The results showed significant differences in cognitive load across presentation conditions (p < 0.05), with the object-based layout associated with relatively higher cognitive load and more active visual behavior. These findings provide empirical evidence on how exhibit text presentation affects visitors’ experience in digital museums and offer design implications for textual information in digital reading environments.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040083

Authors: Frances G. Cooley David Quinto-Pozos

Deaf children who acquire a signed language at home and at school prior to learning to read are a unique group of developing bilinguals. They are first-language users of a signed language (e.g., American Sign Language; ASL) and second-language users of the written form of the ambient spoken language (e.g., English). Because signed languages do not possess orthographies that are widely used, deaf readers typically read in their second language. This profile stands in contrast to hearing bilingual readers, who read in their first language and, sometimes, their second language. In studies of child readers, vocabulary knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension for both monolinguals and bilinguals. We combine the unique linguistic backgrounds of young signing deaf readers with what is known about vocabulary knowledge and reading, guided by the following research question: Does signed (L1) and spoken (L2) vocabulary knowledge predict reading (eye-gaze) behaviors of deaf children when reading in their L2? We present results from an exploratory pilot eye-tracking study of nine deaf ASL-English bilingual children ages 9–11, examining whether ASL and English vocabulary knowledge predict different aspects of the reading paradigm. Results suggest that ASL vocabulary predicts where-decisions and measures of oculomotor control such as skipping and regressions, while English vocabulary predicts when-decisions and first-pass durations. We suggest these results from this small-scale study provide initial support for the language interdependence hypothesis because deaf child signers’ first-language vocabulary knowledge predicts some of the variance in second-language reading performance.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040082

Authors: Anne Friede Christian Vorstius Albrecht Inhoff Ralph Radach

The current study examined the control of long-range regressive eye movements during sentence reading. Skilled readers were asked to read single-line sentences for comprehension. As a secondary task, they identified a probe word presented to the right of each sentence, and then went back to check the corresponding target word for spelling errors that had been added after reading. The regression target was located either close to or far from the probe. Consistent with prior work, initial regressions were larger for far than for near targets, and the finding of far targets required more eye movements and more search time. We replicated previous descriptions of visuomotor regression strategies but also discovered a novel strategy in which readers frequently send their initial regressions to the center of the line, followed by subsequent saccades. Apparently, this happened primarily when spatial knowledge on saccade target location was lacking. Spatial memory and reading skill made distinct contributions to regression targeting. Memory skills strongly determined primary regressions, especially to near targets, whereas reading speed influenced the time needed to attain targets with subsequent saccades.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040081

Authors: Tanya Beelders Luna Bergh

Background: The popularity of Dr. Seuss books across generations and languages is worthy of introspective analysis in order to establish how well the translation adheres to the original essence that is the underlying reason for its enduring nature. This article analyses Horton Hears a Who! and its Afrikaans translation. Methods: A basic stylistic analysis of Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! was conducted in order to determine whether its rhythmic nature and the meter used in the original text translate well into Afrikaans. Additionally, two extracts were used for an eye-tracking experiment whereby participants were asked to read both so that gaze behavior could be analyzed and compared between Afrikaans and English. Results: Eye-tracking results of both passages reveal that readers are comfortably within typical reading behavior and do not experience difficulty when reading the unique style of Dr. Seuss in either language. Stylistic meter does however change the position of elevated fixation durations, but made-up words and the underlying playful tone do not result in difficulty. However, text characteristics, such as length and number of syllables, and word positions, significantly affect gaze behavior. Conclusions: It is concluded that the very nature of Dr. Seuss books that makes the stories come alive for children over generations is successfully embodied in the Afrikaans translation with respect to the aspects tested and that both the serious, skillful writing and the more frivolous story-telling tone is present in the Afrikaans target text.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040080

Authors: Yiyu Zhang Huijun Tang Xiajing Yao

Virtual reality (VR) headsets with built-in eye trackers can record binocular gaze, but prior biometric studies have largely emphasized monocular gaze or general spatial trajectories, leaving the identity value of interocular coordination largely untested. We test whether that geometry provides identity information beyond monocular gaze dynamics. Using the GazeBaseVR dataset, we derive disparity, vergence-dynamic, and fixation disparity features and evaluate them in cross-session identification, task transfer, sequence modeling, replay detection, and return-visit analyses. Adding binocular features to monocular features improves cross-session Rank-1 identification, while binocular features alone provide complementary but limited discrimination. Performance is strongest when enrollment and probe tasks match and weakens sharply across tasks. Per-recording disparity centering leaves much of the binocular-only result intact, and a matched-input temporal convolutional network (TCN) performs better with binocular input than with duplicated monocular input. The TCN embedding overlaps with the disparity and vergence features, and simple feature-level fusion does not improve Rank-1 performance. Left-right gaze consistency can reject simple monocular replay attempts in this constrained setting, but score query adaptation reduces detection performance. In this setting, binocular dynamics are best treated as auxiliary evidence for VR gaze biometrics rather than as a standalone authenticator.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040079

Authors: Marco Villalta-Paucar Jéssica Rebolledo-Etchepare Lautaro Barriga-Carvajal

This study analyzes the relationship between verbal interaction and eye behavior among 112 primary school students in urban and rural classrooms in Chile, using wireless eye-tracking technology. The results reveal statistically significant differences based on socioeducational context and sex. Linear regression analyses show that gaze is a significantly more robust predictor of class participation in rural contexts (R2 adjusted = 0.671) than in urban contexts (R2 adjusted = 0.342). Furthermore, eye behavior explained 71% of the variance in male students, compared to 37.7% in female students. While female students focused their attention primarily on teachers, male students relied on a shared visual distribution between the teacher and peers to regulate their participation in class. In conclusion, the gaze acts as a differentiated scaffolding whose importance intensifies in boys and rural environments. These findings suggest distinct maturational trajectories that require teachers to implement visually intentional instructional strategies to ensure communicative efficiency in the classroom.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040078

Authors: Oguz Bilal Karakus Ayse Akca Muhammed Said Demirkan Zeynep Ahsen Ozcan Didem Cek Ozturk Ilayda Barankoglu Sevin Sumeyra Karakus Ibrahim Selcuk Esin Onur Burak Dursun

This study aimed to compare antisaccade performance among adolescents with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), their unaffected siblings, and healthy controls, and to examine whether this performance may serve as a candidate familial-risk marker for OCD. The study included 48 adolescents aged 12–18 years with OCD, 35 unaffected siblings, and 39 healthy controls. Participants completed an antisaccade task using an eye-tracking device. Antisaccade correct response rate and latency were evaluated as the primary outcomes, whereas saccadic velocity was examined as an exploratory measure of oculomotor execution. The OCD group showed lower antisaccade correct response rate and longer latency compared with healthy controls, whereas the sibling group demonstrated intermediate performance. Exploratory analyses identified statistically significant group differences in mean saccadic velocity; however, this finding should be interpreted cautiously. Regression analyses indicated that both OCD diagnosis and sibling status were independently associated with antisaccade correct response rate and latency, whereas findings for saccadic velocity should be considered exploratory. These findings suggest that impairments in antisaccade performance may not be specific to OCD but may also be present, albeit to a milder extent, in unaffected siblings, providing preliminary evidence supporting antisaccade performance as a candidate familial-risk marker for OCD that warrants further investigation within an endophenotype framework.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040077

Authors: Jianghao Xiao Jinyi Zhi Shiyu Dong Yao Zhou Yao Xiao Dengkai Chen

The sleep monitoring terminal display (SMTD) designated for sleep cabins provides data visualizations of sleep profiles, yet poses challenges concerning visually informed interfaces. Given the scarcity of research on the SMTD interface, this study aims to evaluate the influence of SMTD-related factors, including stimulus areas of interest (AOIs), user experiences and tasks, on user visual perceptions while interacting with the SMTD system. Eye-tracking experimental contexts drawn from authentic settings are used to examine how the SMTD interfaces affect visual perceptions under varying tasks. Forty valid samples were collected, and pupil sizes (PSs), task performances, satisfaction, and usability were statistically compared and evaluated. The findings indicated that tasks had no significant effects, but user experiences and stimuli AOIs had significant main effects on PSs. In addition, task completion time ratio and tracking ratio between the two tasks varied; physical demand exceeded mental demand in task 1, whereas it was the opposite in task 2. The effectiveness of post-optimized interfaces was additionally substantiated through combining subjective ratings and objective metrics. The SMTD study provides novel insights for digital interface development and helps enhance users’ integrated visual perception.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040076

Authors: Stefanos Balaskas

Reproducible eye-movement research requires a documented path from device exports to structured, quality-checked, and reportable data objects. Gazepoint GP3 and Gazepoint Analysis provide accessible gaze, fixation, pupil, timing, media, and area-of-interest data, but their folder-based CSV exports are not automatically analysis-ready. Existing R tools support important stages of eye-tracking and pupillometry analysis, but they generally assume that data have already been organised into suitable structures; they do not provide a Gazepoint-aware workflow beginning with export-folder checks, all-gaze/fixation pairing, sampling and tracking-quality diagnostics, and preservation of preprocessing decisions through reporting. This article presents gp3tools, an open-source R package (R version 4.6.1) that converts Gazepoint GP3/Gazepoint Analysis exports into structured R objects, diagnostic summaries, preprocessing outputs, model-ready tables, interoperability objects, and reproducible reports. Rather than introducing a new statistical estimator, the package provides an export-aware workflow scaffold for import checking, quality control, pupil preprocessing, area-of-interest, fixation and transition summaries, model preparation, interoperability, and reporting. A synthetic Gazepoint-style demonstration dataset was used to evaluate workflow execution without exposing private participant data. The demonstration identified all expected file pairs and produced sample-level gaze/pupil tables, fixation tables, sampling-quality summaries, area-of-interest summaries, review flags, and reporting outputs. A small, private real-export compatibility check further showed that the workflow could process one empirical Gazepoint folder without manual restructuring. These results support a bounded software-evaluation claim: gp3tools executes the tested Gazepoint-style workflow and returns expected diagnostic and reporting objects, but the evidence does not establish hardware accuracy, preprocessing accuracy, computational scalability, general robustness across all Gazepoint exports, or substantive psychological or perceptual effects.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040075

Authors: Yejin Lee Kwangtae Jung

This study investigated the relationship between fixation-frequency-based Shannon entropy and dwell-time-based entropy across two different visual task domains: emotional evaluation of automotive exterior designs and safety-critical monitoring of nuclear power plant emergency scenarios. Although gaze entropy has been widely used to explain emotional responses, task performance, and situation awareness, the relationship between entropy measures derived from fixation counts and fixation durations remains insufficiently examined. Eye-tracking data were analyzed from two experiments with different attentional characteristics. In the emotional visual task, 10 participants evaluated three automotive design images. In the safety-critical task, 20 participants performed four nuclear power plant emergency monitoring scenarios. Shannon entropy and dwell-time entropy were calculated using fixation count and fixation duration distributions across Areas of Interest, respectively. Pearson correlation and simple regression analyses were conducted within each task domain. The results showed strong positive associations between Shannon entropy and dwell-time entropy in both domains. The emotional task showed a correlation of r = 0.844, while the safety-critical task showed a correlation of r = 0.890. These findings suggest that fixation-frequency-based and dwell-time-based entropy measures exhibit substantial overlap across different visual task contexts. However, the observed associations may partly reflect mathematical dependency between fixation frequency and cumulative dwell-time, and the findings should be interpreted as exploratory evidence rather than proof of metric interchangeability. The study highlights that gaze entropy metrics should be interpreted in relation to task-dependent attentional contexts. Higher entropy may be associated with exploratory visual attention in emotional evaluation, whereas lower entropy may be associated with focused monitoring in safety-critical tasks.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040074

Authors: Xiangyang Sun Wenjun Zhang Jiahua Wu Xingwei Xiong Haixia Mei

Brain–computer interface (BCI) technology has shown potential for future rehabilitation-related and assistive control applications. Nevertheless, single-modality electroencephalography-based motor imagery (EEG-MI) signals are susceptible to interference, whereas existing algorithmic models suffer from limited classification accuracy and insufficient actionable control commands for interactive devices, thereby impeding their practical deployment. To tackle these limitations, this study presents a multimodal human–computer interaction control scheme that integrates eye-movement command encoding with EEG motor imagery decoding. Self-collected EEG-MI and eye-movement datasets were established to support the proposed multimodal control framework. In this framework, eye movements are not used merely as auxiliary inputs, but are encoded as discrete commands for start, stop, grasp, and release, thereby reducing the command burden of EEG-MI decoding. The EEG-TransNet model is enhanced by integrating a time–frequency feature branch and replacing the original convolutional encoder with an adaptive multi-branch EEG feature gating module, strengthening the representation and fusion of multi-domain features. The model yields average classification accuracies of 86.96% and 88.73% on the BCI IV-2a dataset and the self-collected EEG dataset, respectively. Four independent SVM binary classifiers are adopted to identify four eye movement patterns. The EEG and eye movement classification results are binary-encoded to generate hardware-compatible control commands. Robotic-arm grasping experiments with healthy trained participants showed an average task completion time of 17 s, and the repeated grasping success-rate results further provide preliminary evidence for the real-time feasibility of the multimodal control framework under controlled laboratory conditions.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040073

Authors: Klementina Možina Dorotea Kovačević Petra Buljat Iva Šarčević Barbara Blaznik Tanja Medved Maja Brozović

This study investigated how congruence between pictogram complexity and typographic complexity influences visual processing and perceived appropriateness in multimodal communication. Drawing on theories of visual communication, legibility and aesthetic perception, the study examined whether simple or complex pictograms harmonise more effectively with sans-serif or serif typefaces. Ninety participants viewed stimuli from three thematic categories (cobbler, herbal pharmacy and gluten-free restaurant), while their eye movements were recorded using a Tobii Pro Fusion eye-tracking device. Measures included reading time, fixation count and saccade count, together with subjective evaluations of pictogram–typeface suitability. The results show that reading time was the most sensitive indicator of formal congruence. In the cobbler and gluten-free restaurant categories, simple pictograms increased reading time with sans-serif typography but decreased it with serif typography. In the herbal pharmacy category, simple pictograms and sans-serif typography independently supported faster reading performance. Subjective evaluations showed no significant differences between combinations, indicating that participants perceived all pairings as similarly appropriate despite measurable differences in processing efficiency. The findings suggest that the effectiveness of pictogram–typeface combinations depends on both formal complexity and thematic context. Eye-tracking proved valuable for revealing subtle cognitive processing differences not reflected in subjective judgements.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040072

Authors: Miwa Horiuchi-Hirose

Background: This pilot study investigated the effects of emotional images on gaze behavior, pupil diameter, and galvanic skin response (GSR). After measuring trait anxiety, 37 healthy adults were shown images (disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, or neutral) from the International Affective Picture System for 4 s each while recording eye tracking and physiological responses. Methods: Recorded data included total fixation duration, average fixation duration, fixation count, first fixation duration, mean pupil diameter during fixation, and average GSR. Results: Compared to images depicting happiness, those depicting fear were associated with longer average fixation duration, fewer fixations, and larger pupil diameters. Compared with neutral images, those showing happiness were associated with larger pupil diameters. No significant differences in GSR were observed across emotion categories. Regarding anxiety levels, fear-inducing images tended to be associated with fewer fixations and larger pupil diameters across all anxiety groups. In moderate- and high-anxiety groups, there was a tendency for longer fixation duration compared to images evoking happiness. Conclusions: Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that while individuals tend to fixate on fear images less often than on happiness images, they fixate for longer on them, which may cause pupil dilation. However, no significant response was observed depending on the level of trait anxiety. Further research using a larger sample size is needed to confirm these initial observations.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040071

Authors: Felix K. Schwarz Gerald Wiest Paulus Rommer

Vertigo, dizziness, and oculomotor disturbances may occur as manifestations of immune-mediated disorders affecting the inner ear, central vestibular pathways, or multisystem autoimmune disease. Although uncommon, these conditions are clinically important because delayed recognition may lead to irreversible hearing loss, vestibular dysfunction, or neurological disability. This review summarizes the clinical presentation, diagnostic approach, and treatment of immune-mediated vestibular and oculomotor disorders. We suggest a practical classification into isolated immune-mediated inner ear disease, systemic autoimmune disorders with audio-vestibular involvement, and autoimmune disorders of the central or peripheral nervous system affecting balance and eye movements. Red flags for such conditions include bilateral or progressive symptoms, fluctuating audio-vestibular deficits, associated neurological signs, and accompanied autoimmune disease. Corticosteroids remain the main first-line treatment in many of these disorders, mainly due to missing data from controlled trials. Steroid-sparing immunosuppressants, biologics, and tumor-directed therapies are effective in many cases; however, because of the missing data, they are only used in selected entities without any other choice. A structured neuro-otological and immunological workup is essential to improve diagnostic accuracy and enable timely therapy.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040070

Authors: Aimy Vadeboncoeur Chelsey Kwan Ada Mocanu Sarah Schipper Olivia Taylor Elizabeth Dannenbaum Joyce Fung

Background: Many individuals with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) exhibit oculomotor dysfunctions that impact their daily functioning. As current clinical screening tools are limited, we have created and pilot-tested the Rehabilitation Oculomotor Screening Evaluation (ROSE) previously in a small sample of people with acquired brain injuries and neurotypical participants. The current study aims to validate ROSE in persons with TBI, focusing on mild TBI (mTBI). Methods: Participants with TBI (n = 25) completed different clinical scales, including ROSE, Sensory Organization Test (SOT) for standing balance, Reintegration to Normal Living Index (RNLI), Timed Up and Go (TUG) for mobility, and a visual analogue scale for the subjective perception of visual vertigo. Neurotypical individuals (n = 24) who were age- and sex-matched completed only ROSE. Results: The group with mTBI (n = 18) had significantly higher ROSE scores compared to the neurotypical group, with a large effect size. Significant correlation was found between ROSE and RNLI scores, but not with other clinical outcomes. Conclusions: Significant between-group difference in ROSE scores and their association with RNLI scores suggest that ROSE is a valid tool in detecting oculomotor dysfunction in TBI. Future studies should continue the validation of ROSE in other TBI and neurologic populations and in larger sample sizes.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19040069

Authors: Yujun Liu Nina Xie Xutang Tong Yuanyuan Wang

Eye-movement studies of manual production often average gaze across an entire trial, obscuring how visual information use changes once actions begin. We separated the pre-writing and writing phases in a fixed progressive Chinese calligraphy task. Thirty-seven postgraduate students completed two style-guided transfer (SGT) pages, a worked example, and two evolution-based mapping (EBM) pages; 34 contributed usable gaze data. On SGT pages, reference allocation fell from 0.626 before writing to 0.131 during writing, whereas the share of reference viewing directed to diagnostic tokens rose from 0.473 to 0.601. On EBM pages, allocation to the cue-plus-context display fell from 0.825 to 0.447 after pen onset but remained substantial; cue share and context coverage also declined. Participant-level process blocks did not improve quality models. In exploratory page-level EBM analyses, greater pre-writing context coverage was associated with higher product quality. These findings identify pen onset as a useful boundary for analyzing visual information use in constrained production: external sampling is greatest before writing, and task-specific re-access persists during execution. Because the task order was fixed, page-family differences cannot be separated from practice or scaffolding. Phase-specific area-of-interest measures can therefore add process information to product scores without treating gaze as a direct measure of cognition.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030068

Authors: Yuxin Yuan Shulan Yu Zhaolong Zhu Dong Jin Yu Sun

Polyurethane synthetic leather is a widely used covering material in automotive interiors, and its surface coating characteristics directly determine the occupant experience. However, the underlying mechanisms by which these characteristics influence visuo-tactile perception in the context of new energy vehicles (NEVs) require further investigation. In this study, a composite experimental matrix was constructed by combining surface textures with distinct roughness gradients and representative colors extracted via data mining within the HSV color space. Targeting these two surface coating characteristics—color and texture—systematic evaluations were conducted across three independent perception stages: purely visual, purely tactile, and combined visuo-tactile. Eye-tracking metrics, specifically pupil diameter and total fixation duration, were extracted and cross-analyzed alongside multidimensional subjective evaluations. The results indicate that surface texture exerts a significant main effect on both perceived tactile softness and pleasantness, whereas the impact of color variation is remarkably weak. Furthermore, highly complex surface textures lead to prolonged fixation durations, reflecting increased exploratory interest and the high perceptual salience of intricate details rather than mere cognitive workload. Moreover, significant differences in pupil diameter were observed across texture conditions, potentially reflecting the combined influence of low-level image properties and higher-order texture perception. Concurrently, an interference effect of visual features on tactile perception was observed; specifically, the introduction of visual cues (encompassing color and texture) significantly diminished the pleasantness experienced during tactile interaction. These findings elucidate the intrinsic connections between surface coating characteristics and users’ visuo-tactile perception, offering important theoretical guidance and practical implications for optimizing the surface design of automotive polyurethane synthetic leather and enhancing the overall occupant experience.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030067

Authors: Francisco Povedano-Montero Álvaro Perales-Serrano Daniela León Lobo Rut González-Jiménez Ricardo Bernárdez-Vilaboa Juan Cedrún-Sánchez

Background: The conventional Hess–Lancaster test is widely used to assess ocular misalignment across diagnostic gaze positions, but it relies on subjective responses and manual recording. Virtual reality may provide a more standardized framework for ocular motility assessment. Objectives: To evaluate the agreement and within-method repeatability of point-by-point deviation measurements obtained with the conventional Hess–Lancaster test and a VR-based Hess–Lancaster assessment implemented in Dicopt Pro. Methods: This cross-sectional observational study included 52 adults with suspected or diagnosed ocular motility disorders. Participants underwent both assessments using the same predefined gaze positions. Agreement was assessed using Bland–Altman analysis, concordance correlation coefficients, mean absolute differences, and mixed-effects modeling. Repeatability was evaluated in a subset with repeated measurements using session-to-session differences and intraclass correlation coefficients. Results: The VR-based assessment showed moderate agreement with the conventional test, with a mean concordance correlation coefficient of 0.57 for both eyes. Mean bias was 1.22 prism diopters for the right eye and 0.10 prism diopters for the left eye. Repeatability estimates were moderate-to-good, with ICC values ranging from 0.62 to 0.83, although repeated measurements were available only in a subset of participants. Conclusions: The VR-based Hess–Lancaster assessment showed small mean differences and moderate agreement with the conventional test, although both methods should be interpreted within the context of the complete clinical examination.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030066

Authors: Yiyu Zhang Xiajing Yao Dechao Li

Translation and post-editing both integrate reading into bilingual text production, yet it remains unclear which computational predictors from multilingual pre-trained models best account for translators’ reading patterns across task types and translation directions. We recruited twenty-six Chinese L1 translators who completed en→zh and zh→en translation and post-editing tasks, yielding 104 eye-tracking sessions. Dependent measures were source reading time (TrtS), target reading time (TrtT), and target production duration (Dur). Predictors were derived from two model architectures, a decoder-only language model (LM) and an encoder–decoder neural machine translation (NMT) model, and they included monolingual surprisal, translation surprisal with source context, and attention features computed from models’ internal weights. Analyses showed that LM surprisal provided the strongest account of target reading, while source reading was most strongly predicted by encoder self-attention with LM surprisal, a robust secondary predictor, and target production duration drew on both LM and NMT translation surprisal. Direction effects were broader than task effects, especially on target measures. These findings suggest that although translation reading is bilingual in task structure, cumulative reading time is best explained by monolingual LM surprisal, whereas production duration additionally reflects NMT translation surprisal and revision behavior.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030065

Authors: Curt Fritts-Davis Andrew T. E. Hartwick Marjean T. Kulp

Introduction: Previous studies have shown those with a history of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) have altered pupillary light responses compared with those without a history of TBI. Those with a history of TBI are also more likely to have accommodative deficits. We investigated the relationship between light-evoked pupil dynamics and accommodative function in individuals who have previously experienced a TBI. Methods: A total of 17 participants with a history of mild TBI were recruited. Pupil metrics were measured using a commercial pupillometer and included baseline diameter, latency, constriction amplitude, average constriction velocity, peak constriction velocity and peak dilation velocity. Accommodative function was assessed using clinical measurements of facility and amplitude. Pupil metrics were compared among those with versus without accommodative dysfunction. Results: One-way ANCOVA testing (controlling for age and time since most recent TBI) comparing groups with and without accommodative dysfunction showed that those with accommodative dysfunction had significantly larger light-evoked pupil constriction amplitudes (p = 0.037) and significantly faster average constriction velocity (p = 0.007) compared with those without accommodative dysfunction. No significant differences were observed for other pupil metrics (p > 0.05 for all). ANCOVA testing (controlling for age and time since TBI) to determine whether decreased amplitude of accommodation or facility was more strongly related to the differences in pupil metrics observed between those with versus without accommodative dysfunction, showed significantly larger light-evoked pupil constriction amplitudes (p = 0.007) and significantly faster average constriction velocity (p = 0.002) among those with reduced accommodative facility compared with those with normal accommodative facility. No statistically significant differences were observed between those with reduced versus normal accommodative amplitude (p ≥ 0.07). Among all participants, monocular accommodative facility measures were significantly correlated with greater pupil constriction amplitude (right eye: rho = −0.721, p = 0.001; left eye: rho = −0.65, p = 0.005), and greater average constriction velocity (right eye: rho = −0.58, p = 0.015; left eye: rho = −0.57, p = 0.016). Conclusions: The results of this small-sample study suggest that accommodative function and light-evoked pupillary dynamics are correlated in individuals with a history of TBI. Those with accommodative dysfunction showed greater pupil constriction amplitudes and velocities and this relationship may reflect shared autonomic or oculomotor mechanisms.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030064

Authors: Seda Busra Sarac Kazim Baris Atici Ismail Bezci Ata Erinc Dansuk Fatma Semira Yildirim

This study aims to provide insight into consumer purchasing decisions by integrating eye-tracking data with forecasting techniques. First, the study investigates how consumption motives (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and purchasing purposes (for oneself vs. for others) influence visual attention and decision-making processes. An experimental design was conducted with 128 participants in a simulated online shopping environment, where eye-tracking data were collected based on fixation counts and durations across defined Areas of Interest (AOIs). Second, a total of 20 input features were collected, comprising fixation counts and fixation durations for 10 review-related Areas of Interest (AOIs), and these features were evaluated across the experimental scenarios, while the binary output variable represented the participant’s purchase decision. These biometric features, together with scenario information, were used to forecast purchasing decisions using six machine-learning methods, including Artificial Neural Networks, Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbors, Naive Bayes, and Logistic Regression. The results indicate that consumers’ visual attention aligns with their consumption motives and purchasing purposes, revealing distinct gaze patterns across different scenarios. In the forecasting phase, the accuracy of different methods for predicting purchasing decisions using review-related eye-tracking data is evaluated. Support Vector Machines achieved the highest overall accuracy, approximately 59–60% across the evaluated datasets, compared with a validation-specific majority-class baseline of 53.85%. This corresponds to a modest improvement of approximately 5.15–6.15 percentage points over the naive benchmark. Overall, the findings suggest that objectively recorded review-related eye-tracking data can be operationalized as behavioral input features in a machine-learning-based purchase-decision classification framework, highlighting the methodological value of integrating eye-tracking insights with consumer behavior forecasting.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030063

Authors: Tian Ran Lijun Guo Hong Xu

A central question in second language (L2) sentence processing concerns how learners resolve referential ambiguity in real time, particularly when cues from their first language (L1) conflict with those of the target language. Given the substantial typological distance between Chinese (an analytic language) and Russian (a highly inflectional language), this study employs eye-tracking methodology to investigate the developmental trajectory of the cognitive mechanisms in referential ambiguity resolution among Chinese learners of Russian. The results revealed proficiency-related differences in ambiguity processing. Both proficiency groups showed increased processing difficulty when encountering ambiguous pronouns, indicating that referential ambiguity imposed a measurable online cost. High-proficiency learners read more efficiently overall, whereas low-proficiency learners showed a stronger first-mention anchoring pattern. These findings suggest that increasing L2 proficiency is associated with changes in processing efficiency and cue weighting during referential resolution. Notably, even high-proficiency learners did not categorically rely on Russian gender agreement to resolve reference in the morphologically disambiguated condition, suggesting that the integration of morphosyntactic cues into real-time reference resolution remains effortful at advanced proficiency. The study contributes eye-tracking evidence on how Chinese-speaking learners manage referential ambiguity in a morphologically rich L2.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030062

Authors: Poonam Kumari Ghasem Azemi Carlo Russo Antonio Di Ieva

Eye-tracking has been utilized to characterize visual behavior in medical image visualization and interpretation, yet neurosurgeons remain underrepresented. Characterizing neurosurgery-specific visual expertise is important for understanding expert search strategies, informing training, and developing computational models. This study examined gaze behavior in naïve observers (Np = 29), neurosurgery registrars (Np = 16), and consultant neurosurgeons (Np = 24), viewing normal (Np = 20) and pathological (Np = 19) brain MR images under a free-viewing paradigm. To capture expertise-related characteristics, we analyzed two features at each fixation location: (i) fixation duration, reflecting temporal allocation of visual attention, and (ii) three-dimensional fractal dimension (3DFD) around each fixation location, quantifying local structural complexity. To assess pathological-type effects, we grouped similar pathologies into five stimulus groups. Linear mixed-effects modelling revealed systematic expertise-related differences, with experts exhibiting longer fixation durations in pathological stimulus groups and pathology-type-dependent complexity sampling. Combined fixation duration and 3DFD features captured complementary aspects of visual expertise, improving Random Forest classifier’s accuracy (>93%) compared to individual features, for all five stimulus groups. These findings highlight neurosurgery-specific markers of visual expertise and demonstrate that combining behavioral and image-derived features could underpin computational models and training tools that emulate expert-level strategies in neurosurgical image interpretation. Future work should evaluate its applicability to other medical domains.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030061

Authors: Taegang Lee Byeongchae Choi Sungmook Choi Soo-Ok Kweon

Prior research on lexical elaboration (providing additional information about unfamiliar words) has yielded non-significant effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Building on this, the present study used eye-tracking technology to examine whether similar results replicate under intentional learning conditions. Participants were Korean undergraduate students (N = 67) who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: baseline, unenhanced elaboration, or enhanced elaboration. They were instructed to read an English text twice while their eye movements were recorded. After reading, they responded to two forewarned vocabulary assessments measuring form and meaning recall. Overall, the unenhanced elaboration group exhibited distinct target-word processing patterns and higher meaning recall performance compared to the baseline group, whereas the enhanced elaboration group’s outcomes were comparable to the baseline group. For instance, generalized linear mixed-effects modeling (GLMM) revealed that while the unenhanced elaboration group maintained stable reading times on target words across the two readings, the baseline and enhanced elaboration groups exhibited significant reductions. Furthermore, only the unenhanced elaboration group significantly outperformed the baseline group in meaning recall. Collectively, our findings suggest that lexical elaboration, particularly without input enhancement, may facilitate vocabulary acquisition under intentional learning conditions by promoting more sustained attention to unfamiliar words.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030060

Authors: Francesco Di Nocera Lorenzo Arciulo Giorgia Tempestini Pierpaolo Zivi Giulio Errico Fabio Ferlazzo

This study examined visual exploration strategies in phishing-email detection by integrating conventional AOI-based eye-tracking measures with a complementary scene-based indicator, the Nearest Neighbor Index (NNI), to capture the global spatial organization of fixations. Thirty-two volunteers completed an email-classification task involving 106 static email stimuli; data from 30 participants were included in the final analyses. For each stimulus, participants judged whether the email was authentic or phishing, allowing for the computation of eye-tracking metrics across Signal Detection Theory classification outcomes. Concerning the NNI, the results showed that the spatial distribution of fixations was higher for suspicious than for non-suspicious emails, indicating a broader visual exploration pattern under higher task demands. More importantly, correct and incorrect responses differed reliably: hits were associated with more dispersed and regular fixation patterns, whereas false alarms were associated with more clustered scanning; misses showed a descriptively similar tendency that did not survive correction for multiple comparisons. Participants also responded faster when correct than when incorrect. When cybersecurity awareness (CAIN) was included as a mean-centered covariate, the primary effects of Signal and Outcome on NNI and decision time remained significant, indicating that the experimental effects are robust to individual differences in cybersecurity knowledge. However, CAIN did not emerge as a reliable predictor of eye-tracking measures within these models, suggesting that its role operates more at the level of classification performance than moment-by-moment gaze organization.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030059

Authors: Chao Gou Yueyao Lin Yuchen Zhou Wenjie Shi Jincheng Jiang

Under the Active Vision hypothesis, eye movements are not passive responses to visual stimuli but are actively guided by task demands and internal goals. In driving, scanpaths may therefore reflect an ongoing process of information sampling for risk assessment. However, current computational models often isolate scanpath prediction from risk assessment, overlooking their intrinsic cognitive coupling. In this study, we investigate whether driver scanpaths and traffic risk perception can be jointly modeled within a unified framework. We propose a computational approach based on the introduced Adversarial Inverse Reinforcement Learning (AIRL), where gaze behavior is interpreted as a policy that maximizes a latent safety-related reward. By employing a generator to simulate human-like sequences of fixations and saccades, and a discriminator to approximate the internal reward signal, our framework ensures that generated scanpaths synergistically inform downstream risk perception. To facilitate this research, we constructed the BDDA dataset, aggregating over 13,000 spatio-temporal gaze points with explicit risk annotations to study this joint mechanism. Experimental results indicate that simultaneously modeling the “where” (scanpath dynamics) and the “why” (risk perception) significantly outperforms the compared baseline methods on the proposed BDDA dataset. These findings provide computational evidence for a functional coupling between visual attention and risk perception, supporting the view that eye movements serve as an active mechanism for acquiring task-relevant information in safety-critical environments.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030058

Authors: Siyu Li Yi Weng Xiyu Wu

A parallel notational system comprising number notation and staff notation has long been employed in the pedagogy of traditional Chinese instrumental music. However, it remains unclear how these two representationally distinct notational systems shape performers’ visual-processing strategies. Therefore, using eye-tracking methods, the present study examined the interactive effects of notation type and score difficulty on visual–cognitive processing in a sight-reading task performed on the erhu, a Chinese two-stringed bowed musical instrument. The results showed that increased difficulty generally led to greater fixation-related load and a contracted eye–hand span (EHS). Interaction analyses further indicated that numbered notation was associated with a more favorable eye-movement profile at intermediate difficulty, whereas this pattern was attenuated under difficult score conditions and accompanied by increased processing demands. In contrast, the eye-movement measures in staff notation appeared to be less sensitive to difficulty-related changes than those observed in numbered notation, a pattern that may reflect differences in the representational structures of the two notational systems. Collectively, these findings suggest that notational symbols may modulate sight-reading strategies among trained erhu students, providing preliminary evidence for music reading across different notational systems.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030057

Authors: Joan Goset Clara Mestre Valldeflors Vinuela-Navarro Mikel Aldaba Mar Ariza Neus Cano Bàrbara Delàs Olga Gelonch Maite Garolera REHAB Project Collaborative Group Meritxell Vilaseca

Cognitive impairment is common in Post-COVID-19 Condition (PCC), yet full neuropsychological testing remains resource-intensive. Because eye movements are known to be altered in certain cognitive disorders, Eye-Tracking (ET) offers a fast, non-invasive complementary approach for large-scale screening. This study aimed to predict neuropsychological test scores of participants with PCC from ET metrics using machine and deep learning models. ET data was collected from 172 participants performing a battery of visual tasks designed to elicit smooth pursuit and fixational eye movements, as well as pupil responses to light. Cognitive performance was assessed through established neuropsychological tests. We applied regression and classification models (e.g., Random Forest, XGBoost, and deep neural networks) to predict neuropsychological performance. Models were trained using ET data alone and in combination with the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) scores, a widely used neuropsychological test for global cognitive screening. Although predicting individual test scores was challenging, combining them into a global composite measure improved performance. Model sensitivity and specificity reached 88% and 34% using ET data alone, and 87% and 60% when integrating ET with MoCA. This last trained model outperformed the conventional MoCA, highlighting the potential of ET as a rapid screening support tool for cognitive assessment.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030056

Authors: Jacek Turski

Human eyes do not have perfectly aligned optical components; the fovea is displaced from the posterior pole, and the crystalline lens is tilted away from the eye’s optical axis. Important in the study of vision quality, it is included here in binocular and oculomotor research. In the binocular system, with the eye’s optical asymmetry, all axes differ. The eye’s posture change is decomposed into the torsion-free part that gives the change in visual axis direction and the torsional part that best approximates the rotation about the lens’s optical axis. This geometric formulation, supported by computer simulations and modern ophthalmology studies, leads to binocular Listing’s law and the related half-angle rule, important for oculomotor control by constraining the eye’s redundant torsional degree of freedom. The eye’s primary position and the Listing plane, indispensable ingredients of Listing’s law, are replaced with the binocular eyes’ posture corresponding to the eye muscles’ natural tonus resting position, which serves as a zero-reference level for convergence effort. Further, the binocular constraints couple 3D changes in the torsional positions of the eyes within the ab initio formulation of Listing’s law here, which was previously proposed ad hoc. Finally, the noncommutativity rule underlying Listing’s law and the half-angle rule are discussed by specifying the configuration space of sequences of fixations of binocularly constrained eyes, which are visualized in 3D simulations. The results obtained in this study should be a part of the answers to the questions posted in the literature on the relevance of Listing’s law to clinical practices.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030055

Authors: Yong Han Wumin Ouyang Hemin Du Mengyun Ma Guanning Wang

Evaluations of medical artificial intelligence (AI) explanations often rely on self-reported trust, perceived usefulness, acceptance, or final decision outcomes, while less directly characterizing whether users check evidence around AI outputs during decision making. In AI-assisted chest radiograph interpretation, a critical process-level question is whether users return from the AI output to the original image evidence when further scrutiny is needed. To address this question, we examined whether verifiable explanations—explanations designed to make AI recommendations checkable against the original image evidence—are associated with process markers of visual evidence checking in AI-assisted chest radiograph interpretation using eye-tracking and human-factors process measures. A 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment manipulated verifiable explanations (present vs. absent) and risk context (high vs. low), with AI recommendation correctness embedded at the trial level. Fifty-six clinically trained participants each completed 24 interpretation trials. Analyses focused primarily on gaze transitions between the AI output and the original image and dwell time on the original image, with response time and exploratory verification-related behavioral states used as auxiliary process measures. Verifiable explanations did not simply increase acceptance of AI recommendations. Instead, when AI recommendations were incorrect, they were most clearly associated with more frequent AI–image transitions and longer absolute dwell time on the original image evidence. Exploratory state-based analyses further suggested a lower tendency toward no-verify adopt under incorrect AI recommendations, but these findings were treated as complementary rather than primary evidence. Overall, the value of verifiable explanations lies not only in final decisions but in whether they make AI recommendations more inspectable against the original evidence. These findings provide eye-tracking evidence consistent with visual evidence checking in AI-assisted diagnostic interfaces and underscore the value of process-sensitive human-factors measures in medical AI evaluation.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030054

Authors: Wen Tong Xiaojiao Li Yingdi Liu Zhifang Liu

This study employed the Ex-Gaussian distribution model to analyse eye-tracking data, to elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying predictive processing during Chinese reading. Using a single-factor, two-level within-subjects design (contextual predictability: high vs. low), data from 32 adult readers were analysed across the pre-target and target word regions. The results revealed that predictive reading follows a three-stage cognitive model. In the expectation generation stage (pre-target region), a significant negative τ effect indicated resource pre-allocation driven by strong contextual constraints, thereby facilitating the construction of predictive lexical representations. In the verification and integration stage (target word region), a significant negative μ effect in the later measurement window indicated that successful prediction–input matching accelerated lexical identification and enhanced integration efficiency; the σ parameter did not reach significance in either measurement window. In the conflict resolution stage (pre-target and target word regions), a significant positive τ effect indicated that verification failure triggered lexical activation competition at the target word, driving regressive fixations to the pre-target region for contextual reanalysis; conflict resolution costs were markedly higher under the low-predictability condition, owing to the absence of a dominant activation anchor. These findings suggest that contextual predictability influences reading through a dual mechanism: the μ parameter modulates the automatic processing speed of lexical identification, whereas the τ parameter regulates the cognitive control processes underlying expectation generation and conflict resolution. Together, these results provide empirical support for the integration of predictive coding theory and cognitive control frameworks.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030053

Authors: Pilar Cacho-Martínez Mario Cantó-Cerdán Zaíra Cervera-Sánchez Ángel García-Muñoz

To propose which tests may be used for diagnosing convergence excess. A prospective study of a consecutive clinical sample was performed. Patients (18–35 years) attending optometric care underwent subjective refraction, cover test, and Symptom Questionnaire for Visual Dysfunctions (SQVD). Based on cover test and SQVD scores, two groups were recruited: 64 symptomatic subjects with near esophoria and 64 asymptomatic with normal binocular vision. Accommodative and binocular tests were assessed, identifying those with significant statistical differences between groups. Diagnostic validity was analysed using ROC curves, sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratios. A serial testing strategy combining tests was also evaluated. ROC analysis showed best diagnostic accuracy for binocular accommodative facility (BAF) failing with −2.00 D (area under the curve, AUC = 0.865) and vergence facility (VF) failing with base-in prisms (AUC = 0.864). Using cutoffs from ROC analysis (BAF: ≤8.25 cpm and VF ≤ 12.75 cpm), their combination showed best validity (S = 0.625, Sp = 0.938, LR+ = 10, LR− = 0.4). The combined AUC was 0.932. The proposal for diagnosing convergence excess is to use, in addition to near esophoria with normal distance heterophoria, the combination of failing BAF with negative lenses and failing vergence facility with base-in prisms.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030052

Authors: Kunyu Lian Junhui Pei Feifei Liang Jie Ma Rong Lian Xuejun Bai

This study investigated how word frequency, word length and visual complexity affect lexical processing during Chinese sentence oral reading, and whether these effects differ between developing and skilled readers. Third-grade children and adults read sentences aloud while their eye movements were recorded with an EyeLink 1000 Plus eye-tracker. Linear mixed-effects models revealed three main findings. First, children showed larger word-frequency and visual-complexity effects than adults, indicating less efficient lexical processing in developing readers. Second, word length moderated the effects of word frequency and visual complexity. Frequency effects were amplified for two-character words, whereas visual-complexity effects were stronger for single-character words on early measures and followed a different pattern on some late measures. Third, at the sentence level, children exhibited shorter forward saccades, more regressions and longer total reading times than adults. These findings provide developmental evidence for the visual and linguistic constraints hypothesis and show how visual recognition and overt phonological output jointly shape foveal lexical processing in Chinese oral reading.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030051

Authors: Lijin Huang Senhao Li Zhi Liu Dan Zhang Lihua Xu Tianhong Zhang Jijun Wang

Although eye movement abnormalities are documented in schizophrenia (SZ), their translation into objective diagnostic biomarkers remains limited. In this study, we propose a novel identification framework that integrates a Sparsity-Scoring Kernel Entropy Component Analysis (SSKECA) algorithm with a multidimensional eye movement feature set. A total of 40 patients with SZ and 50 healthy controls (HC) completed a free-viewing task involving 100 distinct semantic images. The proposed SSKECA algorithm optimizes multidimensional feature representations to capture latent eye movement patterns characteristic of SZ. The SSKECA–AdaBoost model achieved competitive performance, with an accuracy of 0.933 and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of 0.960. Notably, when restricted to only 25 highly discriminative images, the SSKECA–XGBoost model achieved an accuracy of 0.922. Feature ablation analyses not only reproduced previously reported eye movement findings but also highlighted additional atypical patterns. Misclassification analyses revealed more pronounced eye movement deficits in incorrectly classified SZ patients. Overall, the proposed framework translates complex eye movement patterns into robust indicators for subject-level identification, offering a practical and efficient tool to support objective assessment in SZ.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030050

Authors: Haram Choi Sanghun Nam

Virtual reality (VR) technology provides a high sense of immersion and presence to users and can enhance the engagement and performance of learning. However, the VR learning environment introduces more complex audio–visual stimuli than the traditional multimedia learning environment. These excessive stimuli cause negative effects such as distraction and cognitive overload. To minimize these negative impacts and improve the learning environment, we must evaluate learners’ cognitive states under the VR environment. Cognitive states can be evaluated subjectively (e.g., through questionnaires) or objectively (e.g., using biometric signals). Subjective and objective methods must be used simultaneously, and correlations between them must be analyzed for quantifying objective measures. The accurate detection of cognitive states is challenging for traditional statistical analysis methods, necessitating the exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques that can classify cognitive states. This study develops a VR learning experience evaluation system based on eye-tracking data. Cognitive states during VR learning are classified as cognitive overload, immersion, and distraction. Correlations between each cognitive state and eye-tracking metrics are evaluated, and the possibility of cognitive-state quantification is discussed. An LSTM-based model developed in this study classified cognitive states from eye-tracking data with moderate accuracy (75.60%) under a subject-independent validation setting.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030049

Authors: Fatema F. Hirani Farzin Hajebrahimi Tara L. Alvarez

Modern societies are becoming increasingly dependent on electronics, leading to an increase in visual symptoms. Vergence endurance, the ability to sustain performance, may serve as a quantitative metric to complement symptom surveys to assess vergence performance during near visual tasks. To quantify vergence endurance, 48 participants, aged 15 to 23 years with normal binocular vision, completed a 15 min symmetrical disparity vergence step task to assess potential changes in peak vergence speed over the course of the experiment. Peak velocity, final amplitude, and the slope of the linear regression fit of the peak velocity as a function of stimulus recording were quantified for convergence and divergence responses using an eye tracker integrated in a virtual reality headset. Peak velocity was sustained by 63% and 69% of participants for convergence and divergence eye movements, respectively. Convergence and divergence responses were significantly different for peak velocity (p < 0.001) and vergence endurance (p < 0.03). The endurance metric tool has potential that may help shape future clinical applications for those with acquired brain injuries, including concussions or neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis or Parkinson’s disease.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030048

Authors: Jing Li Min Lin Xinyu Feng Hua Zhang Chuchu Wang Yulian Ma

The driving scenario and information load jointly influence the cognitive efficiency of augmented reality head-up display (AR-HUD) interfaces. However, the moderating role of drivers’ working memory capacity (WMC) remains unclear. To investigate this mechanism, a simulated driving experiment with a mixed design was conducted in a low-immersivity desktop virtual reality (VR) environment. First, 40 volunteers were screened using an automated operation span task, yielding 16 high- and low-WMC participants. They then drove under three scenarios (urban intersection, expressway, construction zone) and six levels of AR-HUD visual information load. Generalized linear models were applied to the reaction time, fixation duration, and pupil diameter. The results revealed a significant three-way interaction among WMC, scenario, and information load. High-WMC drivers maintained faster responses and lower subjective loads up to Levels 4–6, adopting a deep processing strategy; low-WMC drivers already showed cognitive overload at Level 4 and above, requiring an optimal load range of Level 2–3. The construction zone induced the steepest increase in cognitive load, whereas the expressway markedly reduced sensitivity to additional visual information. Therefore, the optimal AR-HUD information load must be adapted to drivers’ WMC: high-WMC drivers can safely handle Levels 4–6 in low- or medium-demand scenarios, whereas low-WMC drivers require a minimalist presentation of Levels 2–3 in high-demand situations. This study provides quantitative, empirically grounded guidelines for designing cognitively adaptive AR-HUD interfaces.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030047

Authors: Archayeeta Rakshit Ibrahim M. Quagraine Gokce Busra Cakir Aasef G. Shaikh Fatema F. Ghasia

Fixation instability (FI) and vergence instability (VI) in amblyopia and strabismus are associated with disrupted physiologic fixation eye movements (FEMs). This study examined how viewing conditions affect FEM patterns in strabismic subjects with and without amblyopia. FEMs of the non-dominant/amblyopic and dominant/fellow eyes were recorded using video-oculography during both-eye viewing (BEV), fellow/dominant-eye viewing (FEV/DEV), and amblyopic/non-dominant-eye viewing (AEV/NDEV) in strabismic subjects with amblyopia (SA, n = 56), without amblyopia (S, n = 19), and controls (C, n = 25). FI, VI, fast FEM amplitudes, slow FEM velocities, and time-based control of eye deviation were analyzed. The SA group showed the greatest FI in the amblyopic eye during AEV compared with the fellow eye during FEV, whereas minimal inter-ocular FI differences were observed in the S group and controls. Under monocular viewing, both SA and S groups exhibited increased FI in the non-viewing eye and higher VI than controls. Regression analyses indicated that visual acuity deficits primarily influenced viewing-eye FI and FEM dynamics, while strabismus mainly affected non-viewing-eye FI and slow FEMs. C and S groups showed the least eye deviation during BEV, whereas the SA group showed the least eye deviation—but the highest VI—during AEV, indicating a distinct pattern of incomitance. Distinct FEM patterns shaped by viewing conditions may reflect underlying visuomotor control mechanisms and serve as biomarkers for AI (artificial intelligence)-based classification.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030046

Authors: Mollie McGuire Neda Bahrani Quinn Kennedy Dorion Liston

Working memory, the capacity to store information for near-immediate use, and visual attention, the ability to focus on task-relevant information, are integral skills for military personnel. In civilian populations, stress is associated with worse skills. However, little is known about the relationship between stress, working memory, and visual attention in military officers, who are trained to handle acute stress and operate in high-stress environments. Thirty-three military officers completed a working memory test, a Perceived Stress Questionnaire (PSQ), and an oculometric assessment of visual tracking. The oculometric test was a modified step-ramp test that produces 10 z-scored metrics. Working memory and executive function were assessed via the n-back task. Oculometric performance and self-reported stress levels were independently associated with n-back accuracy, explaining 67% of the variance (adjusted R2, n = 30). The association between oculometric performance and n-back accuracy was driven by directional anisotropy, directional noise and proportion of smooth pursuit. The association between oculometric performance and stress was complicated by sex differences. Results have important implications for the assessment of cognitive readiness in military populations. The strong relationship between oculometric performance and working memory suggests that eye-tracking-based metrics may serve as candidate indicators of cognitive function under operational demands.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030045

Authors: Prem Sudhakar Lawrence Aiswaryah Radhakrishnan

Novice drivers demonstrate inefficient visual scanning and elevated crash risk relative to experienced drivers. Different training programmes may influence gaze behaviour and performance in distinct ways. This study compared the impact of cognitive, simulator-based, and real-world training on visual attention and driving-related outcomes in novice drivers. Thirty novice drivers (18–27 years; ≤1 year driving experience) were randomized into three training groups (n = 10 each): cognitive training (PsyToolkit, Version 3.7.0), game-based simulator training, and supervised real-world driving. Baseline and post-training assessments included visuomotor performance (Fitts’ Law), attentional cueing (valid/invalid reaction time), simulator-based driving errors, and eye-tracking measures of gaze behaviour. Eye-tracking outcomes included dwell-time percentage and first-fixation order across predefined areas of interest (AOIs). Participants completed 10 consecutive days of modality-specific training. Cognitive training improved visuomotor performance and increased forward road monitoring. Game-based simulator training yielded the largest reductions in simulator driving errors, particularly lane deviations (Z = −2.89, p = 0.004). Real-world driving altered visual scanning patterns, with significant differences in rear-view mirror prioritization (p = 0.024). Across groups, gaze shifted from dashboard view toward safety-relevant AOIs. Training modifies novice drivers’ gaze behaviour in modality-specific ways, suggesting that a multimodal training approach may enhance visual attention and driving safety

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030044

Authors: Omar Alvarado-Cando Oscar Casanova-Carvajal José-Javier Serrano-Olmedo

Atypical visual attention to aversive or threatening stimuli is a clinically relevant feature of aggressive behavior. However, the developmental dissociation between sustained visual allocation and early orienting remains unclear. This study examined the temporal dynamics of visual attentional biases in a sample of 119 children and adolescents (51 males, 68 females), clinically and behaviorally categorized into aggressive and non-aggressive cohorts. Using a free-viewing paradigm with standardized emotional stimulus pairs selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS), eye-tracking analysis focused on first-fixation direction and dwell time. Inferential analyses were conducted using Linear Mixed-Effect Models (LMM) and Generalized Linear Mixed-Effects Models (GLMM). The linear model revealed a significant main effect of behavioral condition: individuals with aggressive traits, regardless of their stage of development, showed greater sustained visual allocation toward negative stimuli. In contrast, the GLMM for first-fixation direction identified a significant age-by-condition interaction, indicating that early orienting differences were more clearly expressed in the aggressive adolescent cohort. These findings suggest that sustained visual preference for negative content may represent a relatively stable correlate of aggressive traits, whereas early orienting differences may vary across developmental stages. Together, these two temporal eye-tracking measures may provide complementary information for future computational approaches to aggression screening. In conclusion, these two temporal oculomotor dimensions may provide a useful feature space for future machine-learning pipelines and may serve as complementary candidate markers for comparing computational predictions against clinically established ground truth in aggression screening research.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030043

Authors: Yakov Rabinovich Inbal Man Peles Zina Almer Iris Ben Bassat-Mizrachi Jonathan Sapir Noa Hadar Alon Zahavi Nitza Goldenberg-Cohen

Orbital apex syndrome (OAS) is characterized by optic neuropathy and ophthalmoplegia and is generally associated with poor visual prognosis. The aim of this study was to describe patients with acute OAS who demonstrated substantial recovery of visual function and ocular motility. We retrospectively reviewed the medical records of patients treated for OAS at a tertiary medical center between 2019 and 2024 whose condition ultimately proved reversible. Data on demographics, clinical findings, imaging, management, and follow-up were collected. Six patients (three female, three male; age range 14–87 years) were included and followed for a median follow-up of 7 months (range 2–31). All presented with reduced vision and ophthalmoplegia of varying severity. Underlying etiologies included inflammatory disease (n = 2), lymphoma, infection, blunt trauma, and post-surgical OAS of undetermined etiology (n = 1 each). Treatment was directed at the underlying cause. Visual acuity ranged from 20/30 to hand motion (HM) at presentation and 20/15 to 20/60 at the final visit. Improvement in vision and ocular motility occurred after a median time to clinical improvement of 2.37 months (range 0.25–5 months). Near-complete recovery of ocular motility was observed in all patients, with only one retaining mild abduction limitation. These findings highlight a subset of OAS cases with favorable outcomes and emphasize the importance of early diagnosis and etiology-directed management.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19030042

Authors: Pierluigi Diotaiuti Francesco Di Siena Salvatore Vitiello Alessandra Zanon Pio Alfredo Di Tore Stefania Mancone

Eye tracking (ET) provides process-level indices of how students sample task-relevant information during core academic activities. In school-age learners (6–18 years) with specific learning disorders (SLDs; dyslexia, dysgraphia, and dyscalculia), ET can complement behavioural assessment by quantifying oculomotor patterns linked to decoding, model–production coordination, and stepwise strategy execution. This narrative review synthesises ET findings in SLD across reading, handwriting/copying, and arithmetic and translates them into an applied framework for school-oriented use. We summarise key metrics and Areas of Interest (AOI)-based analyses, highlight technical and data-quality requirements for valid acquisition in educational settings, and outline compact functional assessment protocols integrated with standard academic and neuropsychological measures. Building on these foundations, we propose six hypothesis-driven gaze-contingent paradigms (H1–H6) as preliminary models for future experimental testing rather than as established interventions, and we map each to its current level of empirical support, specifying primary gaze outcomes and curriculum-relevant behavioural endpoints. We emphasise that eye-movement findings in specific learning disorders are heterogeneous and may vary as a function of age, task demands, and comorbidity. Accordingly, credible training effects require retention and transfer probes under standard, non-contingent display conditions, appropriate controls, and explicit developmental interpretation. Eye tracking is positioned as complementary functional evidence and as a platform for experimentally testable, mechanism-based interventions in school-age specific learning disorders.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020041

Authors: Safia Bendjebar Yacine Lafifi Rochdi Boudjehem Aissa Laouissi

In the last few years, universities have increasingly implemented online learning environments, allowing students to study at their own pace. These environments utilize technological tools and implement methods to support training, deliver content, and promote the acquisition of new knowledge and skills. As an example of these technologies, eye tracking has emerged as a powerful tool for studying visual attention, cognitive processes, and learning behaviors. The main aim of this study is to provide a scoping review of recent eye-tracking research across diverse learner populations, ranging from K-12 students to university-level learners and educators. The present study examined recent advances in eye-tracking technologies, focusing on their potential, especially when combined with artificial intelligence (AI) techniques such as machine learning. It analyzed 54 empirical studies in the last few years, highlighting their applicability, strengths, and limitations. The research findings highlight the promise of eye-tracking technology to transform educational practices by providing data-driven insights regarding student behavior and cognitive processes. Future research must address implementation and data-analysis challenges to maximize the educational benefits of eye tracking.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020040

Authors: Ong Koon Noor Badarudin Byoung-Sun Chu

Background: This review discusses the application of eye-tracking technology in the detection and monitoring of binocular vision anomalies among children. Methods: A scoping review using PRISMA guidelines was conducted through Scopus, ScienceDirect, and PubMed using the keywords “eye-tracking,” “binocular,” “vision,” “anomalies,” “paediatrics,” and “children” from 2015 to 2025. Studies excluded were not written in English, did not apply the eye tracker as a research tool, involved an ineligible population, or involved non-human subjects. Results: The search strategy identified 77 citations, yet only 14 studies met the inclusion criteria. This review revealed a variety of binocular vision anomalies detectable through eye-tracking systems, along with the specific models and parameters employed in these assessments. Application of eye-tracking technology in diagnosing conditions such as strabismus and amblyopia demonstrated potential for improved accuracy and early detection. Discussion: Eye-tracking technology demonstrates considerable potential for the detection and monitoring of binocular vision anomalies in children, particularly as a non-invasive method for early screening, thereby strengthening its clinical applicability. By assessing fixation stability, saccadic movements, and vergence responses, eye-tracking allows for the early detection of subtle visual anomalies, especially in the paediatric population. Conclusions: Eye-tracking technology represents a valuable advancement in paediatric vision care, enabling the more objective and earlier detection of binocular vision anomalies in the paediatric population.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020039

Authors: Clara Martinez-Perez Noelia Nores-Palmas Jacobo Garcia-Queiruga Maria J. Giraldez Eva Yebra-Pimentel

Purpose: To systematically review and meta-analyze randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating digital orthoptic interventions, including virtual reality (VR)–based approaches, for convergence insufficiency and intermittent exotropia. Methods: This systematic review and meta-analysis followed PRISMA 2020 guidelines and AMSTAR-2 standards and was prospectively registered in PROSPERO. PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched up to December 2025. Eligible studies were RCTs comparing VR-based or digital orthoptic interventions with conventional therapy, placebo VR, or control conditions. Primary outcomes included near point of convergence, ocular deviation, fusional reserves, and stereopsis. Risk of bias was assessed using RoB 2 and certainty of evidence with GRADE. Results: Four RCTs (184 participants) were included. In convergence insufficiency, digital orthoptic interventions, including VR-based approaches, significantly reduced near heterophoria (mean difference [MD] −1.64 prism diopters; 95% CI −3.17 to −0.12), with no significant effects on near point of convergence or positive fusional reserves. In intermittent exotropia, VR-based interventions significantly improved near point of convergence (MD −1.60 cm; 95% CI −2.64 to −0.55), although this change did not reach the ≥4 cm threshold considered clinically meaningful according to the Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial. Improvements were also observed in stereopsis (MD −0.19 log units; 95% CI −0.33 to −0.04), while changes in near deviation were not significant. Evidence certainty ranged from low to moderate. Conclusions: VR-based and digital orthoptic interventions may offer modest, outcome-specific benefits as adjunctive treatments for selected binocular vision disorders. Larger, well-designed RCTs with standardized outcomes are needed.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020038

Authors: Wumin Ouyang Hemin Du Yong Han Zihuan Wang Yuyu He

Understanding how users perceive and attend to the anthropomorphic appearance and empathic responses of artificial intelligence medical conversational agents (AIMCAs) can help reveal the key judgment cues underlying trust formation and use decisions, while also informing interface and dialog design. To this end, this study employs a 3 (appearance anthropomorphism: high, medium, low) × 2 (empathic response: present, absent) within-subject eye-tracking experiment, combined with subjective scales and brief post-task open-ended feedback. During a static prototype viewing task based on hypothetical consultation scenarios, we concurrently recorded trust, behavioral intention, and visual measures for key areas of interest (AOIs; appearance area, conversational content area, and overall interface area). Eye-tracking measures were normalized by AOI coverage proportion to improve cross-AOI comparability. The results show that both anthropomorphic appearance and empathic response significantly increased users’ trust in AIMCAs and their behavioral intention. An interaction between these two types of social cues was also observed, suggesting that when visual embodiment and linguistic style are aligned at the social level, users are more likely to form favorable overall judgments. At the level of visual processing, however, no interaction effect was found, and the eye-tracking measures showed only partial main effects, indicating that subjective synergy does not necessarily correspond to synergistic changes in attentional allocation. Overall, anthropomorphic appearance and empathic response exerted consistent facilitating effects on outcome variables, but displayed different patterns of attentional allocation and information prioritization at the visual level. Accordingly, AIMCA design should emphasize consistency between appearance cues and conversational strategies, optimize users’ initial judgments and interface comprehension, and use intention through verifiable information organization and clear boundary cues.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020037

Authors: Anas Igbariye Noa Hadar Basel Obied Adi Berco Alon Zahavi Inbal Man Peles Nitza Goldenberg-Cohen

Ocular tilt reaction (OTR) and trochlear nerve palsy (TNP) can induce cyclotorsion. We aimed to assess the utility of fundus photography in distinguishing between these disorders. The database of a neuro-ophthalmology hospital-based clinic was retrospectively searched for patients referred for new-onset vertical diplopia between 2020 and 2023. Medical data were collected, and the angle between the optic disc and fovea was measured using ImageJ software to quantify torsion. Distinct torsional patterns were identified between the groups. OTR was characterized by variable, often conjugate torsion, whereas TNP demonstrated consistent disconjugate extorsion. Analysis of interocular torsional relationships, rather than magnitude alone, provided useful diagnostic discrimination. Fundus photography may be useful for differentiating OTR from TNP in complicated neurological cases, particularly in patients who are difficult to examine. This study emphasizes the practical clinical value of fundus photography as a simple, accessible, and objective tool for differentiating OTR from TNP, by contributing the torsional component of OTR triad, particularly in emergency or diagnostically challenging settings where standard examination may be limited.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020036

Authors: Carmen Bilbao Julia Cavero Jorge Ares Alba Carrera Diana Gargallo

Purpose: To investigate the relationship between oculomotor skills, phorias, and visual symptoms in pediatric population aged 5 to 8 years. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 120 children, divided into three age groups. Each participant underwent a full optometric examination, including the Maddox test for dissociated phoria, and the Northeastern State University College of Optometry (NSUCO) and Developmental Eye Movement (DEM) tests for oculomotor function. In addition, the Convergence Insufficiency Symptom Survey (CISS V-15) questionnaire was administered to assess visual symptoms. Results: The prevalence of binocular and oculomotor dysfunctions varied by age and sex. Differences in saccadic and pursuit eye movement performance were observed between groups. Older children showed patterns of association between phoria measurements, oculomotor performance, and possible visual symptoms, particularly in girls over 6 years of age. Conclusions: This study provides additional descriptive data for the pediatric population and highlights that oculomotor dysfunction and phoria frequently coexist. Symptom scores measured by the CISS V-15 tended to increase with age. The results should be considered preliminary and potentially hypothesis-generating, pending the future availability of a validated questionnaire to assess phoria-related symptoms in children from 5 years of age. Overall, this study underscores the importance of comprehensive binocular vision assessments in school-aged children.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020035

Authors: Yiu-Kei Tsang Ming Yan Jinger Pan

This study utilized the gaze-contingent boundary paradigm to examine age-related changes in parafoveal processing during Chinese sentence reading. A community sample of 65 older readers and 68 younger readers from Hong Kong read 130 sentences while their eye movements were recorded. In each sentence, an invisible boundary was placed just before a critical target word. Before the readers’ eye gaze crossed the boundary, a parafoveal preview was presented in the position of the target word. The preview could be identical, orthographically related, phonologically related, semantically related, or unrelated to the first character of the target word. Once the eye gaze passed the boundary, the preview characters changed to the target. For the younger readers, the related parafoveal previews facilitated the subsequent foveal processing of the target compared to the unrelated previews across early and late eye movement measures. In contrast, the older readers demonstrated a reduced identical preview benefit in early eye movement measures. They also showed benefits in other preview conditions only in later measures. These results suggest that older Chinese readers can extract linguistic information from parafoveal vision despite reduced visual acuity. However, the efficiency of parafoveal processing is reduced, potentially due to slower processing speed and less efficient spreading activation within the lexical network.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020034

Authors: Lu Yin He Zhang Renke He

Compared to traditional offline collaboration, current online collaboration often lacks nonverbal social cues, resulting in lower efficiency and a reduced emotional connection between teammates. To address this issue, this study used a two-player collaborative puzzle game as the experimental setting to explore the impact of two nonverbal social cues, emotion and gaze, on collaborative experience and performance. Specifically, this study designed four collaborative modes: with and without teammates’ facial expressions, and with and without teammates’ gaze points. Sixty-two participants took part in the experiment, and each pair was required to complete these four patterns. Subsequently, we analyzed their collaborative experience through subjective questionnaires, objective facial expressions, and gaze overlap rates. The experimental results revealed that teammates’ gaze could effectively enhance collaborative efficiency, while facial expression is key to optimizing subjective experience. Combining both cues further acquires advantages in cognitive and emotional dimensions, leading to improved performance outcomes. The study also indicated that facial expressions could alleviate the social pressure triggered by shared gaze from teammates. Additionally, the study also examined how personality differences influenced collaborative experiences and performance. The results indicated that individuals with high agreeableness actively seek social cues, leading to more positive collaborative experiences. This study provides empirical evidence for understanding the interactive mechanisms of cognitive and emotional processes during online collaboration, and points the way toward designing adaptive, personalized intelligent collaborative systems.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020033

Authors: Jack Prosser Anna Metzger Matteo Toscani

Gaze analysis often relies on hypothesised, subjectively defined regions of interest (ROIs) or heatmaps: ROIs enable condition comparisons but reduce objectivity and exploration; while heatmaps avoid this, they require many pixel-wise comparisons, making differences hard to detect. Here, we propose an advanced data-driven approach for analysing gaze behaviour. We use DNNs (adapted versions of AlexNet) to classify conditions from gaze patterns, paired with reverse correlation to show where and how gaze differs between conditions. We test our approach on data from an experiment investigating the effects of object-specific sounds (e.g., church bell ringing) on gaze allocation. ROI-based analysis shows a significant difference between conditions (congruent sound, no sound, phase-scrambled sound and pink noise), with more gaze allocation on sound-associated objects in the congruent sound condition. However, as expected, significance depends on the definition of the ROIs. Heatmaps show some unclear qualitative differences, but none are significant after correcting for pixelwise comparisons. We showed that, for some scenes, the DNNs could classify the task based on individual fixations with accuracy significantly higher than chance. Our approach shows that sound can alter gaze allocation, revealing task-specific, non-trivial strategies: fixations are not always drawn to the sound source but shift away from salient features, sometimes falling between salient features and the sound source. Crucially, such fixation strategies could not be revealed using a traditional hypothesis-driven approach. Overall, the method is objective, data-driven, and enables clear comparisons of conditions.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020032

Authors: Marco Villalta-Paucar Jéssica Verónica Rebolledo-Etchepare

Student gaze behavior has been scarcely studied in real Latin American primary school classrooms. The objective of this study is to analyze the relationship between primary students’ eye behavior and cognitive development in urban and rural contexts. A quantitative method was employed, including 126 primary school students aged 6 to 8 years old, from urban and rural schools in Chile. Raven’s Colored Progressive Matrices (CPM) measured cognitive development, and students’ eye behavior was recorded during a real class using eye-tracking glasses. Eye behavior was analyzed in six areas of interest: (1) Own material (2) teacher, (3) teacher’s material, (4) peer, (5) peer’s material, and (6) non-interactional gaze. The results indicate that the CPM scale demonstrates adequate reliability (α = 0.89). In addition, no significant differences, nor relationship between eye behavior and cognitive development, were found by sex; however, significant differences were found by environment (urban versus rural). The regression analysis is significant (F(7, 102) = 6.173, p < 0.001) and suggests that gazing at the teacher’s material and one’s own material are negative predictors of non-interactional gaze or students’ disconnection from the class. In conclusion, distraction in the classroom is influenced by learning-related contextual variables rather than sex or cognitive development.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020031

Authors: Wilson Cheong Hin Hong

Eye-tracking methodology represents a young but rapidly growing approach in tourism research, offering a direct window into the cognitive processes driving tourism stakeholders’ behaviour. However, a critical gap remains between the rapid adoption of this tool and the methodological rigour required to interpret its neurophysiological data. This critical review synthesizes 23 empirical studies (2020–2025) from the destination marketing and branding domain to diagnose eye-tracking’s state-of-the-art application. Adopting the SALSA framework (Search, Appraisal, Synthesis, Analysis) augmented by PRISMA 2020 guidelines, this study systematically searched Web of Science and Scopus databases. Studies were appraised using an eight-dimensional quality rubric, assessing from theoretical grounding to experimental design to statistical rigour. Findings revealed a “tool-first” exploratory phenomenon, where the majority of studies relied on basic fixation metrics to infer complex psychological states such as “interest”, when they could imply other cognitive states. Furthermore, most reviewed studies failed to control for stimulus-level confounds (e.g., luminance, AOI size) and utilized inappropriate data-handling procedures and methods, such as the absence of data cleaning and treating count and binary data as continuous data. These, coupled with transparency deficits, undermined the validity of their conclusions. Hence, a Checklist for Eye-Tracking Rigour (CETR) and a methodological decision tree were developed to guide researchers towards confirmatory and neurobiologically grounded research. Findings also provided a framework for managers/practitioners to more accurately interpret eye-tracking studies.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020030

Authors: Zhiyi Guo Zihao Cao Yongchun Mao Muhizam Mustafa Yuqi Luo Yueyue Ning

Product visual strategies (PVS) on food packaging influence how consumers visually inspect products at the point of purchase. However, evidence comparing transparent windows and product images remains mixed, particularly regarding how these strategies interact with food unit size (FUS) and shape visual attention patterns. Moreover, few studies have examined these effects using objective eye-tracking measures within controlled experimental designs. This study employed a 2 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experiment to investigate the effects of PVS (transparent window and product image) and FUS (large unit and small unit) on visual attention and subsequent product-related evaluations. A total of 160 participants viewed realistic chocolate package stimuli that varied only in visual strategy and unit size. Eye movements were recorded using Tobii Pro Glasses 2. Visual attention was assessed through Time to First Fixation (TFF) and Fixation Duration (FD), while expected tastiness, expected quality, and purchase intention were measured using standardized self-report scales. The results showed that transparent-window packaging attracted visual attention more rapidly and sustained longer fixations than product-image packaging. These attention differences were accompanied by higher expected tastiness, expected quality, and purchase intention. While food unit size alone showed limited effects on eye-movement measures, a significant interaction was observed: small-unit designs elicited greater visual attention and more favorable evaluations only when the product was directly visible through a transparent window. Overall, the findings demonstrate how product visual strategies and food unit size jointly shape visual attention allocation during packaging inspection. By integrating eye-tracking measures with evaluation and behavioral intention outcomes, this study contributes to applied eye-movement research in food packaging contexts.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020029

Authors: Seokjun Oh Tahsin Nairuz Sung-Jun Park Jong-Ha Lee

Age-related cognitive impairment represents a critical stage in the continuum of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD), highlighting the need for objective and non-invasive physiological indicators of early neurological change. This study investigates the simultaneous analysis of microsaccadic eye movements and pupil size variations as ocular biomarkers associated with age-related cognitive impairment using eye-tracking technology. A total of 70 participants were recruited and categorized into three age groups: individuals in their 20s, 60s, and 70s. Participants in their 70s were further categorized based on MMSE-K scores into cognitively normal (≥24) and impaired (≤23) subgroups. Quantitative analyses showed a significant age-related increase in microsaccade frequency along both axes, with significantly higher microsaccade frequencies (p < 0.01) among individuals with lower cognitive scores within the same age group. Pupil size variation, including constriction and dilation rates, declined with age, while response speed remained relatively unchanged across all age groups. These findings highlight a clear association between age related-cognitive decline and involuntary ocular responses. The proposed dual-biomarker method offers a non-invasive and quantitative framework that may complement traditional cognitive screening tools. Future studies involving larger cohorts and clinically diagnosed AD populations are required to determine the diagnostic utility of these ocular biomarkers.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020028

Authors: Julia Bend Markus Gödker Elise Sophie Banach Thomas Franke

This study investigated how perceptual workload in driving situations is captured by subjective ratings versus eye-tracking metrics. Fifty participants completed low- and high-complexity conditions while fixation behavior, blinks, and pupil diameter were recorded, and workload was assessed using the DALI scale. High-load scenes elicited longer fixations, fewer fixations per minute, reduced blinking, and increased pupil dilation, indicating elevated attentional demand. DALI scores increased with scene complexity and were negatively associated with fixation duration, demonstrating that participants’ subjective ratings were driven primarily by perceptual strain rather than cognitive effort. Eye-tracking patterns supported this interpretation: fixation-based indicators tent to reflect the cognitive component of demand, whereas DALI selectively tracked perceptual overload. Together, these results show that DALI is highly sensitive to visual density, and that eye-movement measures provide converging evidence for its specificity as a perceptual load instrument.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020027

Authors: Nina Xie Yuanyuan Wang Yujun Liu

Digital calendars are interactive representations of time that shape both scheduling outcomes and the micro-process of searching, verifying, and revising candidate placements. We examine calendar horizon—whether weekend time is visible in the default week view—as a boundary affordance in scheduling interfaces. Using eye tracking and interaction logs, we model each scheduling episode as a sequence of placement attempts and align gaze to each attempt, partitioning it into Early/Mid/Late phases and summarizing attention across structural AOIs (task panel, calendar grid, and the weekend column when present). Two experiments used drag-and-drop and dropdown slot-picking; weekend visibility was manipulated within the dropdown interface, while evening slots remained available. Across 105 participants (1018 task episodes), AttemptsCount ranged from 1 to 7. AttemptsCount predicted gaze-based process cost: each additional attempt corresponded to ~56% more total fixation duration. Personal tasks required more attempts than work tasks and elicited stronger Late-phase weekend verification when the weekend was visible. Horizon cues also shifted boundary outcomes: hiding the weekend reduced weekend placements and increased reliance on evening scheduling, indicating displacement into adjacent time regions. These findings position calendar horizon as a design lever that shapes both process (verification) and outcomes (boundary placements), with implications for calendar UIs and mixed-initiative scheduling tools.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020026

Authors: Xiumei Song Yunhan Zhang Hongyu Chen Chenyu Tang Bohan Yao Hubin Zhao Luigi G. Occhipinti Arokia Nathan Changbin Zhai Shuo Gao

Amblyopia is a developmental disorder of spatial vision in which abnormal visual experience leads to persistent reductions in acuity and contrast sensitivity, even after optimal optical correction. We introduce a brief, child-friendly battery of task-evoked eye tracking that probes fixation stability, fine pattern processing, and smooth pursuit control across three simple paradigms. Oculomotor traces are transformed into physiologically interpretable markers—fixation dispersion and saccadic strategy, orientation-dependent drift and stability, pursuit gain, and tracking error—and used to train a compact classifier with subject-wise validation and probability calibration. In a cohort of school-aged participants with clinically diagnosed unilateral amblyopia and age-matched visually normal controls tested under best-corrected viewing conditions, the approach consistently separated groups with stable performance across folds; feature-importance analyses indicated that pursuit- and orientation-dependent markers contributed most. The protocol runs in minutes, is objective and noninvasive, and is well tolerated in pediatric settings. By quantifying functional consequences of amblyopic vision that complement conventional acuity testing, this work positions task-evoked eye movements as practical biomarkers for screening and monitoring, and lays the groundwork for prospective validation and age-stratified norms in community and school-based vision care.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020025

Authors: Takaya Maeyama Hiroki Okada Daisuke Sawamura

Driving safety critically depends on the ability of drivers to efficiently recognize and process guide sign information under varying traffic conditions. This study examined how driving speed (slow/fast) and guide sign location (front/left) influence eye-movement behavior during guide sign recognition, and how these effects relate to drivers’ cognitive functions and basic demographics. Twenty-four licensed drivers performed a guide sign recognition task using onboard video stimuli, and eye movements based on fixations and saccades were recorded. Generalized linear mixed models with participants as random effects were used to analyze the interactions between driving conditions, cognitive functions, demographics, and eye movement measures. Under low-load conditions, such as slow driving and front-positioned signs, individual differences in cognitive functions, including verbal memory and useful field of view, were strongly reflected in eye-movement behavior. Under high-load conditions characterized by fast driving and left-positioned signs, the influence of cognitive function was reduced, and eye movements were more strongly associated with driving experience. Increasing driving speed was associated with fewer eye movements, whereas the saccade amplitude remained unchanged, indicating the suppression of exploratory eye movements. For left-positioned signs, the fixation duration on the target was maintained, whereas gaze shifts between the forward environment and the sign were reduced.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19020024

Authors: Kyunghyun Park Unseok Lee Sejoon Moon Hyungsik Bae Hyungoo Kang

This study developed a tablet PC–based eye movement assessment application and conducted a pilot investigation to explore whether tablet-based ocular motor metrics demonstrate functional sensitivity to variations in conventional visual function parameters. Twenty-three healthy adults (10 males, 13 females; mean age: 24.41 ± 1.91 years) without a history of ocular disease performed smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movement tests at three difficulty levels. For exploratory analysis, participants were stratified into above- and below-mean groups based on conventional visual function test results. For smooth pursuit movements, mean pursuit traversal time demonstrated statistically significant differences between the low–medium (1.11 s) and low–high (1.14 s) difficulty levels (p < 0.05), with corresponding differences in derived velocity. Saccadic movements showed significant mean accuracy differences between low-high (1.02 points) and medium-high (0.95 points) difficulty levels (p < 0.05). Participants with higher-than-average horizontal phoria values (distance and near) and the blur/break points of near convergence amplitude exhibited significantly longer smooth pursuit traversal times (corresponding to slower derived velocities) (p < 0.05). The high-value group for blur point of near convergence amplitude demonstrated significantly superior saccadic accuracy (1.63 points) compared with the low-value group (1.30 points) (p < 0.05). Exploratory associations between visual function parameters and ocular motor performance were observed within the healthy participant group, suggesting exploratory associations between tablet-based smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movement performance and conventional visual function measures. These findings suggest that tablet PC–based eye movement assessment may serve as a feasible, low-cost approach for exploratory screening and functional monitoring, rather than a validated diagnostic tool.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010023

Authors: Adem Korkmaz

Eye tracking has become a central method in human–computer interaction (HCI), supported by advances in sensing technologies and AI-based gaze analysis. Despite this rapid growth, a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of eye-tracking research across the broader HCI landscape remains lacking. This study combines records from Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus to analyse 1033 publications on eye tracking in HCI published between 2020 and 2025. After merging and deduplicating the datasets, we conducted bibliometric network analyses (keyword co-occurrence, co-citation, co-authorship, and source mapping) using VOSviewer and performed a qualitative content analysis of the 50 most-cited papers. The literature is dominated by journal articles and conference papers produced by small- to medium-sized research teams (mean: 3.9 authors per paper; h-index: 29). Keyword and overlay visualisations reveal four principal research axes: deep-learning-based gaze estimation; XR-related interaction paradigms within HCI; cognitive load and human factors; and usability- and accessibility-oriented interface design. The most-cited studies focus on gaze interaction in immersive environments, deep learning for gaze estimation, multimodal interaction, and physiological approaches to assessing cognitive load. Overall, the findings indicate that eye tracking in HCI is evolving from a measurement-oriented technique into a core enabling technology that supports interaction design, cognitive assessment, accessibility, and ethical considerations such as privacy. This review identifies research gaps and outlines future directions for benchmarking practices, real-world deployments, and privacy-preserving gaze analytics in HCI.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010022

Authors: Ziqi Liu Zhengxing Yang Yifan Du

In complex urban traffic environments, the design of multimodal prompts in augmented reality head-up displays (AR-HUDs) plays a critical role in driving safety and operational efficiency. Despite growing interest in audiovisual navigation assistance, empirical evidence remains limited regarding when prompts should be delivered and whether visual and auditory information should remain temporally aligned. To address this gap, this study aims to examine how audiovisual prompt timing and prompt mode influence driving behavior in AR-HUD navigation systems at complex F-type-5 m intersections through a within-subject experimental design. A 2 (prompt mode: synchronized vs. asynchronous) × 3 (prompt timing: −1000 m, −600 m, −400 m) design was employed to assess driver response time, situational awareness, and eye-movement measures, including average fixation duration and fixation count. The results showed clear main effects of both prompt mode and prompt timing. Compared with asynchronous prompts, synchronized prompts consistently resulted in shorter response times, reduced visual demand, and higher situational awareness. Driving performance also improved as prompt timing shifted closer to the intersection, from −1000 m to −400 m. But no significant interaction effects were found, suggesting that prompt mode and prompt timing can be treated as relatively independent design factors. In addition, among the six experimental conditions, the −400 m synchronized condition yielded the most favorable overall performance, whereas the −1000 m asynchronous condition performed worst. These findings indicate that in time-critical and low-tolerance scenarios, such as F-type-5 m intersections, near-distance synchronized multimodal prompts should be prioritized. This study provides empirical support for optimizing prompt timing and cross-modal temporal alignment in AR-HUD systems and offers actionable implications for interface and timing design.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010021

Authors: Valentin Foucher Anke Huckauf

Over the past decades, eye movements and blinks have been integrated into Concealed Information Test (CIT) paradigms as indicators of deception. Recent findings suggested that fixation patterns in CITs depend on stimulus layout, particularly the distinction between sequential and simultaneous stimulus presentation. In addition, the impact of social presence on deceptive eye movements, critical for application of the CIT in real-world social settings, remains insufficiently examined. The present study addresses these issues through two experiments. In both, participants selected a card and had to reveal, conceal, or fake its value while all possible cards were displayed in pairs. Experiment 1 examined whether deceptive intentions could be differentiated using fixations and blinks, and extended previous findings on the effect of stimulus layout. Experiment 2 assessed the stability of deception-related eye movements and blinks across various levels of social presence (without, per video, being observed by a real person). Our findings replicate effects previously observed with simultaneous stimulus presentation of more cards, demonstrating how stimulus layout modulates deception-related eye movement patterns in CITs. The levels of social presence realised in this study did not significantly alter these patterns, indicating that deception-related eye movements and blinks in CITs remain stable under passive social presence.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010020

Authors: Shumpei Takinami Yuka Morita Jun Seita Tetsuro Oshika

Strabismus affects 2–4% of the global population, with horizontal cases accounting for more than 90%. Automated screening using monocular gaze estimation technology shows promise for early detection. However, existing models assume normal binocular vision, and their applicability to strabismus remains unvalidated due to the lack of evaluation platforms capable of reproducing disconjugate eye movements with known ground-truth angles. To address this gap, we developed an open-source, low-cost (approximately 200 USD) horizontal strabismus simulator. The simulator features two independently controllable artificial eyeballs mounted on a two-axis gimbal mechanism with servo motors and gyro sensors for real-time angle measurement. Mechanical accuracy achieved a mean absolute error of less than 0.1° across all axes, well below the clinical detection threshold of 1 prism diopter (≈0.57°). An evaluation of three representative AI models (Single Eye, GazeNet, and EyeNet) revealed estimation errors of 6.44–8.75°, substantially exceeding the clinical target of 2.8°. At this error level, small-angle strabismus (<15 prism diopters) would likely be missed, underscoring the need for strabismus-specific model development. Moreover, rapid accuracy degradation was observed beyond ±15° gaze angles. This platform establishes baseline performance metrics and provides a foundation for advancing gaze estimation technology for strabismus screening.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010019

Authors: Xinyi Wu Xiangen Wu Weixing Hu Jian Sun

Despite the increasing adoption of desktop virtual reality (VR) in higher education, the specific instructional efficacy of 3D interactive prompts remains inadequately understood. This study examines how such prompts—specifically dynamic spatial annotations and 3D animated demonstrations—influence learning outcomes within a desktop virtual learning environment (DVLE). Employing a quasi-experimental design integrated with eye-tracking and multimodal learning analytics, university students were assigned to either an experimental group (DVLE with 3D prompts) or a control group (basic DVLE) while completing physics tasks. Data collection encompassed eye-tracking metrics (fixation heatmaps, pupil diameter and dwell time), post-test performance (assessing knowledge comprehension and spatial problem-solving), and cognitive load ratings. Results indicated that the experimental group achieved significantly superior learning outcomes, particularly in spatial understanding and dynamic reasoning, alongside optimized visual attention patterns—characterized by shorter initial fixation latency and prolonged fixation on key 3D elements—and reduced cognitive load. Eye-tracking metrics were positively correlated with post-test scores, confirming that 3D prompts enhance learning by improving spatial attention guidance. These findings demonstrate that embedding 3D interactive prompts in DVLEs effectively directs visual attention, alleviates cognitive burden, and improves learning efficiency, offering valuable implications for the design of immersive educational settings.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010018

Authors: Erica Jostrup Marcus Nyström Göran Söderlund Emma Claesdotter-Knutsson Peik Gustafsson Pia Tallberg

White noise has been proposed to enhance cognitive performance in children with ADHD, but findings are inconsistent, and benefits vary across tasks and individuals. Such variability suggests that diagnostic comparisons may overlook meaningful developmental differences. This exploratory study examined whether developmental characteristics and subjective evaluations of auditory and visual white noise predicted performance changes in two eye-movement tasks: Prolonged Fixation (PF) and Memory-Guided Saccades (MGS). Children with varying degrees of ADHD symptoms completed both tasks under noise and no-noise conditions, and noise benefit scores were calculated as the performance difference between conditions. Overall, white-noise effects were small and dependent on noise modality and task. In the PF task, large parent-rated perceptual difficulties and high visual noise discomfort were associated with improved performance under noise. In the MGS task, poor motor skills predicted visual noise benefit, whereas large visual noise discomfort predicted reduced noise benefit. These findings suggest that beneficial effects of white noise are influenced by developmental characteristics and subjective perception in task-dependent ways. The results highlight the need for individualized, transdiagnostic approaches in future noise research and challenge the notion of white noise as categorically beneficial for ADHD.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010017

Authors: Khadija Iddrisu Waseem Shariff Maciej Stec Noel O’Connor Suzanne Little

Eye movement classification, particularly the identification of fixations and saccades, plays a vital role in advancing our understanding of neurological functions and cognitive processing. Conventional modalities of data, such as RGB webcams, often face limitations such as motion blur, latency and susceptibility to noise. Neuromorphic Vision Sensors, also known as event cameras (ECs), capture pixel-level changes asynchronously and at a high temporal resolution, making them well suited for detecting the swift transitions inherent to eye movements. However, the resulting data are sparse, which makes them less well suited for use with conventional algorithms. Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) are gaining attention due to their discrete spatio-temporal spike mechanism ideally suited for sparse data. These networks offer a biologically inspired computational paradigm capable of modeling the temporal dynamics captured by event cameras. This study validates the use of Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) with event cameras for efficient eye movement classification. We manually annotated the EV-Eye dataset, the largest publicly available event-based eye-tracking benchmark, into sequences of saccades and fixations, and we propose a convolutional SNN architecture operating directly on spike streams. Our model achieves an accuracy of 94% and a precision of 0.92 across annotated data from 10 users. As the first work to apply SNNs to eye movement classification using event data, we benchmark our approach against spiking baselines such as SpikingVGG and SpikingDenseNet, and additionally provide a detailed computational complexity comparison between SNN and ANN counterparts. Our results highlight the efficiency and robustness of SNNs for event-based vision tasks, with over one order of magnitude improvement in computational efficiency, with implications for fast and low-power neurocognitive diagnostic systems.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010016

Authors: Alisa Baron Alexia Martins Gavino Puggioni Vanessa Harwood

Fluent word reading is a key literacy skill, yet the full extent of the oculomotor underpinnings in developing readers remains unknown. Rapid automatized naming (RAN) is a useful clinical measure that has been shown to predict word reading fluency. Here we use RAN scores to predict early, mid, and late local stages of word reading as measured by eye tracking in children who are at a critical time in their literacy development. Thirty-three children participated in two RAN tasks (rapid letter naming (RLN) and rapid digit naming (RDN)) and an eye-tracking task, which included sentence-level reading with an embedded target word. The eye-tracking measures of first fixation duration, regression path duration, and total word reading time were used as early, mid, and late local measures, respectively. RLN and RDN significantly predicted only the mid-stage of the reading process (regression path duration). Faster RLN and RDN times were associated with briefer regressions from target words. Preliminary results link behavioral RAN performance to a mid-stage oculomotor variable, indicating that children with slower RAN times may exhibit longer regressions during reading, suggesting possible difficulties with the integration of phonological processing skills.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010015

Authors: Cristina Rovira-Gay Clara Mestre Marc Argilés Jaume Pujol

The purpose of the study was to analyze, characterize, and compare the measurements of saccades that occurred during the positive and negative fusional vergence test (PFV and NFV, respectively) as a function of the disparity vergence demand. Thirty-four participants’ PFV and NFV amplitudes were measured in a haploscopic setup, recording eye movements with an Eyelink 1000 Plus (SR Research). The visual stimulus was a column of letters. Break and recovery points were determined objectively offline, and saccades were detected with a velocity-threshold-based method. A total of 13,103 and 14,381 saccades were detected during the measurement of the PFV and NFV ranges, respectively. Saccades followed the main sequence (ρ = 0.97, p < 0.001). The distributions of saccadic amplitudes during PFV and NFV differed significantly (U = 4.28, p < 0.001). The amplitude of saccades that occurred while fusion was maintained (median (IQR) 0.73 (0.92) deg) was significantly smaller than that of saccades during diplopia (2.10 (3.90) deg) (U = −75.63, p < 0.001). The distributions of saccade direction during the measurement of PFV and NFV amplitudes were statistically significantly different (p < 0.01). These findings contribute to a better understanding of how the visual system adjusts saccades in response to different disparity vergence demand during fusional vergence amplitudes evaluation.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010014

Authors: Adem Korkmaz Sevinc Gülsecen Grigor Mihaylov

Understanding how tacit knowledge embedded in visual materials is accessed and utilized during evaluation tasks remains a key challenge in human–computer interaction and visual expertise research. Although eye-tracking studies have identified systematic differences between experts and novices, findings remain inconsistent, particularly in art-related visual evaluation contexts. This study examines whether tacit aspects of visual evaluation can be inferred from gaze behavior by comparing individuals with and without formal art education. Visual evaluation was assessed using a structured, prompt-based task in which participants inspected artistic images and responded to items targeting specific visual elements. Eye movements were recorded using a screen-based eye-tracking system. Areas of Interest (AOIs) corresponding to correct-answer regions were defined a priori based on expert judgment and item prompts. Both AOI-level metrics (e.g., fixation count, mean, and total visit and gaze durations) and image-level metrics (e.g., fixation count, saccade count, and pupil size) were analyzed using appropriate parametric and non-parametric statistical tests. The results showed that participants with an art-education background produced more fixations within AOIs, exhibited longer mean and total AOI visit and gaze durations, and demonstrated lower saccade counts than participants without art education. These patterns indicate more systematic and goal-directed gaze behavior during visual evaluation, suggesting that formal art education may shape tacit visual evaluation strategies. The findings also highlight the potential of eye tracking as a methodological tool for studying expertise-related differences in visual evaluation processes.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010013

Authors: Yixuan Wei Xueli Wen Shu Wang Lanyun Zhang Jianwu Chen Longzhe Jin

Background: Emergency rescuers frequently carry heavy equipment for extended periods, making musculoskeletal disorders a major occupational concern. Loading type and road slope play important roles in inducing physical fatigue; however, the assessment of physical fatigue under these conditions remains limited. Aim: This study aims to investigate physical fatigue under different loading types and road slope conditions using both electromyography (EMG) and eye movement metrics. In particular, this work focuses on eye movement metrics as a non-contact data source in comparison with EMG, which remains largely unexplored for physical fatigue assessment. Method: Prolonged load-bearing walking was simulated to replicate the physical demands experienced by emergency rescuers. Eighteen male participants completed experimental trials incorporating four loading types and three road slope conditions. Results: (1) Loading type and road slope significantly affected EMG activity, eye movement metrics, and perceptual responses. (2) Saccade time (ST), saccade speed (SS), and saccade amplitude (SA) exhibited significant differences in their rates of change across three stages defined by perceptual fatigue. ST, SS, and SA showed strong correlations with subjective fatigue throughout the entire load-bearing walking process, whereas pupil diameter demonstrated only a moderate correlation with subjective ratings. (3) Eye movement metrics were incorporated into multivariate quadratic regression models to quantify physical fatigue under different loading types and road slope conditions. Conclusions: These findings enhance the understanding of physical fatigue mechanisms by demonstrating the potential of eye movement metrics as non-invasive indicators for multidimensional fatigue monitoring in work environments involving varying loading types and road slopes.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010012

Authors: Jason Turuwhenua Mohammad Norouzifard Zaw LinTun Misty Edmonds Rebecca Findlay Joanna Black Benjamin Thompson

Optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) is an involuntary sawtooth eye movement that occurs in the presence of a drifting stimulus. Our experience is that low-amplitude/short-duration OKN can challenge the limits of our commercially available Pupil Neon eye-tracker, leading to false negative OKN detection results. We sought to investigate whether such instances could be remediated. We compared automated OKN detection using: (1) the gaze signal from the Pupil Neon (OKN-G), (2) centroid tracking (OKN-C), and (3) an image-phase-based “motion microscopy” technique (OKN-MMIC). The OKN-C and OKN-MMIC methods were also tested as a remediated step after a negative OKN-G result (OKN-C-STEP, OKN-MMIC-STEP). To validate the approaches adults (n = 22) with normal visual acuity was measured whilst viewing trials of an OKN induction stimulus shown at four levels of visibility. Confusion matrices and performance measures were determined for a “main” dataset that included all methods, and a “retest” set, which contained instances where centroid tracking failed. For the main set, all tested methods improved upon OKN-G by Matthew’s correlation coefficient (0.80–0.85 vs. 0.76), sensitivity (0.89–0.95 vs. 0.85), and accuracy (0.91–0.93 vs. 0.88); but only OKN-C yielded better specificity (0.90–0.96 vs. 0.95). For the retest set, MMIC and MMIC-STEP methods consistently improved upon the performance of OKN-G across all measures.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010011

Authors: Suraj Upadhyaya

Visual search behavior, influenced by expertise, prior knowledge, training, and visual fatigue, is crucial in ophthalmic diagnostics. This study investigates differences in eye-tracking strategies between novice and experienced eye care practitioners during fundus image interpretation. Forty-seven participants, including 37 novices (first- to fourth-year optometry students) and 10 experienced optometrists (≥2 years of experience), viewed 20 fundus images (10 normal, 10 abnormal) while their eye movements were recorded using an Eyelink1000 Plus gaze tracker (2000 Hz). Diagnostic and laterality accuracy were assessed, and statistical analyses were conducted using Sigma Plot 12.0. Results showed that experienced practitioners had significantly higher diagnostic accuracy (83 ± 6.3%) than novices (70 ± 12.9%, p < 0.005). Significant differences in oculomotor behavior were observed, including median latency (p < 0.001), while no significant differences were found in median peak velocity (p = 0.11) or laterality accuracy (p = 0.97). Diagnostic accuracy correlated with fixation count in novices (r = 0.54, p < 0.001), while laterality accuracy correlated with total dwelling time (r = −0.62, p < 0.005). The experienced practitioners demonstrated systematic and focused visual search patterns, whereas the novices exhibited unorganized scan paths. Enhancing training with visual feedback could improve fundus image analysis accuracy in novice clinicians.

Journal of Eye Movement Research doi: 10.3390/jemr19010010

Authors: Paula Fehlinger Bernhard Ertl Bianca Watzka

Eye movements are important indicators of problem-solving or solution strategies and are recorded using eye-tracking technologies. As they reveal how viewers interact with presented information during task processing, their analysis is crucial for educational research. Traditional methods for analyzing saccades, such as histograms or polar diagrams, are limited in capturing patterns in direction and amplitude. To address this, we propose a kernel density estimation approach that explicitly accounts for the data structure: for the circular distribution of saccade direction, we use the von Mises kernel, and for saccade amplitude, a Gaussian kernel. This yields continuous probability distributions that not only improve accuracy of representations but also model the underlying distribution of eye movements. This method enables the identification of strategies used during task processing and reveals the connections to the underlying cognitive processes. It allows for a deeper understanding of information processing during learning. By applying our new method to an empirical dataset, we uncovered differences in solution strategies that conventional techniques could not reveal. The insights gained can contribute to the development of more effective teaching methods, better tailored to the individual needs of learners, thereby enhancing their academic success.