Spontaneous Eye Movements During Visual Imagery Reflect the Content of the Visual Scene

Brandt, Stephan A.; Stark, Lawrence

doi:10.1162/jocn.1997.9.1.27

Cited by 403 publications

(367 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…Brandt and Stark (1997) recently found that the pattern of eye movements was similar when viewers looked at checkered diagrams and when they formed images of them from memory. However, fixations tended to be 75-100 ms longer during imagery than actual looking.…”

Section: Illusions and Imagerymentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research.

Rayner

1998

Psychological Bulletin

6,025

231

5,590

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Recent studies of eye movements in reading and other information processing tasks, such as music reading, typing, visual search, and scene perception, are reviewed. The major emphasis of the review is on reading as a specific example of cognitive processing. Basic topics discussed with respect to reading are (a) the characteristics of eye movements, (b) the perceptual span, (c) integration of information across saccades, (d) eye movement control, and (e) individual differences (including dyslexia). Similar topics are discussed with respect to the other tasks examined. The basic theme of the review is that eye movement data reflect moment-to-moment cognitive processes in the various tasks examined. Theoretical and practical considerations concerning the use of eye movement data are also discussed.Many studies using eye movements to investigate cognitive processes have appeared over the past 20 years. In an earlier review, I (Rayner, 1978b) argued that since the mid-1970s we have been in a third era of eye movement research and that the success of research in the current era would depend on the ingenuity of researchers in designing interesting and informative studies. It would appear from the vast number of studies using eye movement data over the past 20 years that research in this third era is fulfilling the promise inherent in using eye movement behavior to infer cognitive processes. The first era of eye movement research extended from Javal's initial observations concerning the role of eye movements in reading in 1879 (see Huey, 1908) up until about 1920. During this era, many basic facts about eye movements were discovered. Issues such as saccadic suppression (the fact that we do not perceive information during an eye movement), saccade latency (the time that it takes to initiate an eye movement), and the size of the perceptual span (the region of effective vision) were of concern in this era. The second era, which coincided with the behaviorist movement in experimental psychology, tended to have a more applied focus, and little research was undertaken with eye movements to infer cognitive processes. Although classic work by Tinker (1946) on reading and by Buswell (1935) on scene perception was carried out during this era, in retrospect, most of the work seems to have focused on the eye movements per se (or on surface aspects of the task being investigated). Tinker's (1958) final review ended on the rather pessimistic note that almost every-

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Section: Illusions and Imagerymentioning

confidence: 99%

Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research.

Rayner

1998

Psychological Bulletin

6,025

231

5,590

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…Brandt and Stark (1997) showed that spontaneous eye movements occurred during visual imagery and that these eye movements closely reflected the content and spatial relations from the original picture or scene. The participants were first introduced to a simple visual grid pattern that they were to memorize; shortly afterward, they were asked to imagine the pattern.…”

Section: Experiments 2: Viewing and Then Describing A Picturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, all of our mental representations are propositional (Pylyshyn, 2002(Pylyshyn, , 2003. Spivey and Geng (2001) and Spivey et al (2000) had a different approach than Brandt and Stark (1997) and Laeng and Teodorescu (2002). They interpreted their results in an "embodied" view of the mind (e.g., Ballard, Hayhoe, Pook, & Rao, 1997;Spivey, Richardson, & Fitneva, 2004) whereby motor processes, such as eye movements, are naturally and tightly coupled with the perceptual and cognitive processes that subserve mental representations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pictures and Spoken Descriptions Elicit Similar Eye Movements During Mental Imagery, Both in Light and in Complete Darkness

2006

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This study provides evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while participants listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In addition, this effect occurs both while watching a blank white board and while sitting in complete darkness.This study includes 4 experiments. The first 2 experiments measured eye movements of participants looking at a blank white board. Experiment 1 monitors eye movements of participants on 2 occasions: first, when participants listened to a prerecorded spoken scene description; second, when participants were later retelling it from memory. Experiment 2 first monitored eye movements of participants as they studied a complex picture visually, and then later as they described it from memory. The second pair of experiments (Experiments 3 and 4) replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with the only difference being that they were executed in complete darkness. This method of analysis differentiated between eye movements that are categorically correct relative to the positions of the whole eye gaze pattern (global correspondence) and eye movements that are only locally correct (local correspondence). The discussion relates the findings to the current debate on mental imagery.

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“…De plus, les séquences oculomotrices ont sans doute un rôle dans la mémoire et la formation des images mentales. Ainsi, S.A. Brandt et al [19] L'imagerie fonctionnelle a permis d'explorer l'activité corticale mise en jeu lorsqu'on demande à des sujets de reproduire de mémoire une séquence qu'ils viennent d'effectuer de façon visuellement guidée [20][21][22][23]. En plus du réseau cortical impliqué dans le contrôle des saccades simples, les séquences de saccades activent un circuit composé principalement du précuneus, d'une région située dans le sillon intrapariétal, d'une région antérieure au COS et d'une région antérieure au COF, située dans le sillon frontal supérieur, qui correspond à un foyer déjà impliqué dans la mémoire spatiale à court terme (voir plus haut) [14] ou dans l'exploration spatiale [15].…”

Section: Contrôle Cortical Des Séquences De Saccadesunclassified