Cognitive Processing During Saccadic Eye Movements

人们做快速的眼球运动，称为扫视，以检查他们周围的世界。 扫视之间的静止期称为注视。 众所周知，视觉在扫视过程中受到抑制;因此，关于世界的视觉信息仅在注视过程中获得。 最近的研究结果表明，扫视也干扰特定的认知过程。 这项研究将确定为什么会发生这种情况，同时也探讨了认知扫视抑制现象的基本特征和普遍性。 四个假设的潜在抑制的可能机制将在一系列的实验中进行调查，从工作记忆，数学认知，刺激的新奇，从语义记忆提取。 一般来说，实验将检查在眼睛注视期间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移动期间暂停。 人们将被呈现一个简单的心理任务，当他们注视空间中的一个位置时，他们将开始执行该心理任务，然后当试图继续执行该任务时，他们将对空间中的不同位置进行短或长的扫视。 如果在眼球运动过程中认知处理受到抑制，那么长时间的扫视（需要更长的时间来执行）应该比短时间的扫视（需要更少的时间来执行）更能破坏性能。 表现也将在另一种情况下进行测量，在这种情况下，眼睛不动。 如果眼动不干扰认知，则眼动条件下的表现应等同于无眼动条件下的表现。 认知处理对扫视行为的影响（例如，眼跳的潜伏期、持续时间、准确性和峰值速度）也将被检查，以确定干扰的相互作用。平均每人每秒进行大约三次眼跳（因此，每16小时工作日约有172，800次扫视），而平均扫视持续约30毫秒;因此，如果抑制发生在扫视期间，这将意味着认知每天被中断大约90分钟。 确定为什么会发生这种情况对于理解人类认知至关重要，特别是对于需要许多眼球运动的场景感知和场景导航等活动。 这项研究也有实际意义的视觉显示器和控制面板，可能需要用户进行扫视的设计。

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. Recent findings have shown that saccades also interfere with particular cognitive processes. This research will determine why this occurs while also exploring the fundamental characteristics and generality of the phenomenon of cognitive saccadic suppression. Four hypotheses about the possible mechanisms underlying suppression will be investigated in a series of experiments drawn from the areas of working memory, mathematical cognition, stimulus novelty, and retrieval from semantic memory. In general, the experiments will examine whether cognitive processes that are set in motion during an 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 effects of cognitive processing on saccadic behavior (e.g., saccade latency, duration, accuracy, and peak velocity) will be examined as well to determine the reciprocity of the interference.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 90 minutes each day. Determining why this occurs is of fundamental importance to the understanding of human cognition, particularly for activities such as scene perception and scene navigation that require many eye movements. The research also has practical implications for the design of visual displays and control panels that may require users to make saccades.