Statistical patterns of visual search for hidden objects

被引:21
作者
Credidio, Heitor F. [1 ]
Teixeira, Elisangela N. [2 ]
Reis, Saulo D. S. [1 ]
Moreira, Andre A. [1 ]
Andrade, Jose S., Jr. [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Fed Ceara, Dept Fis, BR-60451970 Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil
[2] Univ Fed Ceara, Programa Posgrad Linguist, BR-60451970 Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil
关键词
FEATURE-INTEGRATION-THEORY; SACCADIC EYE-MOVEMENTS; MICROSACCADES;
D O I
10.1038/srep00920
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
The movement of the eyes has been the subject of intensive research as a way to elucidate inner mechanisms of cognitive processes. A cognitive task that is rather frequent in our daily life is the visual search for hidden objects. Here we investigate through eye-tracking experiments the statistical properties associated with the search of target images embedded in a landscape of distractors. Specifically, our results show that the twofold process of eye movement, composed of sequences of fixations (small steps) intercalated by saccades (longer jumps), displays characteristic statistical signatures. While the saccadic jumps follow a log-normal distribution of distances, which is typical of multiplicative processes, the lengths of the smaller steps in the fixation trajectories are consistent with a power-law distribution. Moreover, the present analysis reveals a clear transition between a directional serial search to an isotropic random movement as the difficulty level of the searching task is increased.
引用
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页数:6
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