Elsevier

Vision Research

Volume 48, Issue 22, October 2008, Pages 2382-2393
Vision Research

Changes in the functional visual field during search with and without eye movements

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2008.07.020Get rights and content
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Abstract

The size of the functional visual field (FVF) is dynamic, changing with the context and attentive demand that each fixation brings as we move our eyes and head to explore the visual scene. Using performance measures of the FVF we show that during search conditions with eye movements, the FVF is small compared to the size of the FVF measured during search without eye movements. In all cases the size of the FVF is constrained by the density of distracting items. During search without eye movements the FVF expands with time; subjects have idiosyncratic spatial biases suggesting covert shifts of attention. For search within the constraints imposed by item density, the rate of item inspection is the same across all search conditions. Array set size effects are not apparent once stimulus density is taken into account, a result that is consistent with a spatial constraint for the FVF based on the cortical separation hypothesis.

Keywords

Visual search
Crowding
Functional visual field
Eye movements

Cited by (0)

1

Present address: Research Triangle Institute, Raleigh, NC, USA.