Cognitive Processing During Saccadic Eye Movements

9615988欧文人会进行快速的眼球运动，称为扫视，以观察他们周围的世界。两次扫视之间的静止时间称为注视。众所周知，视觉在扫视时受到抑制，因此，只有在注视时才能获得关于世界的视觉信息。这项研究将调查眼跳是否也会干扰特定的认知过程。初步研究结果表明，这可能是真的，但证据并不令人信服；这项研究将为最终答案提供一些步骤。这些实验将检测在一只眼睛注视时启动的认知过程是否在眼睛移动到空间中的新位置时继续运行，或者这些过程是否在眼睛运动期间暂停。人们将被呈现一项简单的心理任务，当他们在太空中盯着一个位置时，他们将开始执行这项任务，然后在试图继续执行任务的同时，他们将以短或长的速度扫视到空间中的不同位置。如果认知处理在眼球运动过程中受到抑制，那么长眼跳(执行时间较长)对性能的影响应该比短眼跳(执行时间较短)更大。还将在另一种情况下测量表现，在这种情况下，眼睛不动。如果眼动不影响认知，在眼动状态下的表现应该等同于在无眼动状态下的表现。普通人每秒大约进行三次眼跳(也就是说，每16小时工作一天大约有172,800次眼跳)，平均眼跳持续大约30毫秒；因此，如果在眼跳过程中发生抑制，这意味着认知每天大约被干扰90分钟。如果发生这种情况，那真的是非同寻常。因此，确定这种情况是否发生对于理解人类认知是至关重要的，特别是对于需要许多眼球运动的阅读和场景感知等活动。***

9615988 IRWIN People make rapid eye movements called saccades in order to examine the world around them. The still periods between saccades are called fixations. It is well known that vision is suppressed during saccades; therefore, visual information about the world is acquired only during fixations. This research will investigate whether saccades also interfere with particular cognitive processes. Preliminary findings suggest that this may be true, but the evidence is not convincing; this research will provide some steps toward a definitive answer. The experiments will examine whether cognitive processes that are set into motion during one eye fixation continue to operate while the eyes are moving to a new position in space or whether these processes pause during the eye movement. People will be presented with a simple mental task that they will begin to perform while they are fixating one position in space and will then make either a short or a long saccade to a different position in space while attempting to continue performing the task. If cognitive processing is suppressed during eye movements, then long saccades (which take longer to execute) should disrupt performance more than short saccades (which take less time to execute). Performance will also be measured in another condition, in which the eyes do not move. Performance in the eye-movement conditions should be equivalent to performance in the no-eye-movement condition if eye movements do not interfere with cognition. The average person makes about three saccades per second (hence, about 172,800 saccades per 16-hour working day), and the average saccade lasts about 30 ms; thus, if suppression occurs during saccades, it would mean that cognition is disrupted for approximately ninety minutes each day. If this happens, it is truly remarkable. Thus, determining whether this occurs is of fundamental importance to the understanding of human cognition, particularly for activities such as reading and scene perception that require many eye movements. ***