| Abstract: | Experimental psychologists have recently amassed a great deal of evidence supporting the hypothesis that the visual system can select a particular location over other locations in the visual field for further analysis without overtly orienting the eyes to the selected location. At the same time, we know that during reading and scene perception, the eyes are overtly directed to new regions of the visual field every 200 to 300 msec on average. How are covert shifts of attention and overt movements of the eyes related during complex visual-cognitive tasks? The available evidence from studies of the perceptual span in reading suggests that attention is allocated asymmetrically around the fixation point, with more information acquired in the direction that the eyes are moving. Based on this evidence and evidence from explorations of eye movement control in reading, the author presents a tentative model of the relationship between attention and eye movements, called the Sequential Attention Model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
