眼动系列第一期-眼动的早期历史 - 北京恒挚科技有限公司

Eye Movement Series Phase I - Early History of Eye Movement

Eye movements have been developed over 200 years ago. Eye movements are currently used in a variety of fields including psychology and cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, computer science, driving and simulation user experience, consumer and business research. More than 150,000 eye-movement-related papers have been published. At the beginning of the new century, especially after 13 years, the rate of publication has increased at an annual rate of more than 5000 papers (Figure 1).

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The most convenient way to understand a field is to learn about its history of development.

The history of eye-movement equipment may seem irrelevant to experiments, but only by understanding the equipment can we perform better experiments. The history of the tool is also the history of technology and the history of the development of ideas. Knowing the history of oculomotor development can better help us grasp the principles of oculomotor operation, so that we can conduct experiments with greater ease.

Early methods of eye movement observation were mainly based on the observation method and mechanical recording method. This issue focuses on the observation method.

Observation method - mirror refraction method

In 1879, Louis Émile Javal, a French ophthalmologist, observed eye movements in silent reading using a mirror on the side of the page, which he placed directly in front of and to the right of the person who was reading, and then stood behind the reader to look at a mirror image of the reader's face, and found that reading involved a series of discontinuous movements, and he was the first to record these pauses using scientific methods , coining the term sweeping to explain this phenomenon.

Landolt used essentially the same approach in his study of the reading of sentences and individual words in different languages.

And in 1916 Freeman designed and described a small head device for holding a mirror in the proper position for the experimenter to observe from behind. The details are as follows:

The mirror is mounted in an adjustable frame so that it can be adjusted to be near the subject's eye. When the head is kept upright, the top of the mirror is at the same level as the lower edge of the pupil of the eye. In this way, the subject can read material through the mirror that is kept at the same level as the eye while the experimenter can see enough of the eye to observe its movement. The reading object should be oriented toward a window or other light source, and the text to be read should be placed at eye level. Reading speed was measured by a stopwatch in the subject's hand. The subject, without leaving the subject's eyes, uses a pencil and paper to note the number of times the subject gazes at each line as it is read.

The mirror observation method is logically and operationally simple, but the method is not objective enough. Also the subject observed the eye movements on the mirror surface behind or to the side of the subject, which led to a very complicated data analysis.

Observation method - peephole method

In 1928, Miles discovered a direct observation method at Stanford. It requires only a hole punched in the middle of the paper that will be read. The experimenter takes the book and sits on a stool in front of a chair. At the same time, he sat the reader in the chair, held the page in front of him to the reader, and used the hole to observe the subject's eye movement response.

The peephole method solves the complex problem of mirror eye movements. However, due to the limitation of the method, this method still can only simply observe the movement of human eyes and cannot analyze it in depth.

Observation method - Microscope method

In the same year that Miles invented the peephole method, Ohrwall discovered that it was possible to place the microscope very close to the subject's eye and focus on a small blood vessel, by which he observed the subject's rapid successive gaze.

In the figure below, the subject observes the visual stimulus at S at R and the subject's right eyeball at E through the microscope at T.

The microscopic method allows detailed observation of most of the subject's regular eye movements, but this method requires the subject to wear a jaw rest, bite a tongue depressor, and other additional fixation devices. Subjects are unable to perform excessively long experiments under such strong control conditions. It also does not guarantee the ecological validity of the experiment.

Observation method - Posterior image method

Some experimenters have also taken a different approach by using posterior images to study the change in gaze point during eye movements. In the experiment, the subject's visual field is completely dark except for a small beam of light. As the subject's eye moved from one point to another, a white light simultaneously moved in the direction of the eye movement. The light stimulus is intermittent, flashing 120 times per second, then the band of light in the afterimage becomes a series of white dots, each representing 1/120th of a second. Relatively accurate eye movement velocities can be obtained using this method. The posterior image method requires the subject to perform the experiment in a dark room, and the stimulation of bright light prevents the subject from performing the experiment for long periods of time. The subject's subjective report of eye movement trajectory is too subjective.

Concluding remarks

This issue briefly introduces the history of the development of the observation method in eye movements. One can feel the process of eye movement observation from rough to deep, which is also the process of eye movement research continuously deepening. In fact, only preliminary observations were not enough in the development of eye movements, and various devices were soon invented to provide an in-depth understanding of eye movements. The historical development of this part will be described in detail in the future.

References

Bell, C. (1823). On the motions of the eye, in illustration of the uses of the muscles and nerves of the orbit. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (113 ), 166-186.

Carter, B. T., & Luke, S. G. (2020). Best practices in eye tracking research. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 155, 49-62.

Javal, E. (1878). Essai sur la physiologie de la lecture. Annales d'Ocilistique, 80, 97-117.

Landolt, E. (1891). Nouvelles recherches sur la physiologie des mouvements des yeux. Achives d'ophthalmologie, 11, 385-395.

Freeman, F. N. (1916). Experimental Education: Laboratory Manual and Typical Results. Houghton Mifflin.

Miles, Walter (1928). The Peep-Hole Method for Observing Eye Movements in Reading. The Journal of General Psychology, 1(2), 373-374. doi:10.1080/ 00221309.1928.9920134

Yan G. L., Bai X. J.. (2018). Fundamentals and Applications of Eye Movement Analysis Techniques. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press.

Newhall, S.M. (1928).Instrument for observing ocular movements. The American Journal of Psychology, 40(4), 628-629.

Lamansky, S. (1869). Bestimmung der Winkelgeschwindigkeit der Blickbewegung, respective Augenbewegung. archiv für die gesamte Physiologie des Menschen und der Tiere, 2( 1), 418-422.

Company Profile

Beijing Hengzhi Technology Co., Ltd, invested by China Science (Guangdong) Science Group, relying on Guangdong Institute of Human Factors Technology and Wuhan Institute of Human Factors Engineering Technology, is a new high-tech enterprise based on psychological human factors, driving human factors, biomechanics, user experience, virtual reality and other directions, integrating production, research and development, sales and technical services, has been successfully selected in the list of high-tech enterprises in Zhongguancun. .

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Eye Movement Series Phase I - Early History of Eye Movement

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