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Alfred Yarbus was a Russian psychologist who studied eye movements in the 1950s and 1960s. His book Eye Movements and Vision stands as one of the most cited publications in the area of eye movement and vision. Yarbus recorded observers' eye movements with his homemade gaze tracking suction cap device together with a self-constructed recording device. His findings showed that when different people viewed the same painting, the patterns of eye movements were similar but not identical. He figured out that when we view a complex scene, we show repeated cycles of inspection behavior. During these cycles, the eye stops and examines the most important elements of the picture. For example, when a viewer look at a portrait image The observer eye cycles periodically through a triangle on the eyes, nose, and mouth of the pictured subject. | Alfred Yarbus was a Russian psychologist who studied eye movements in the 1950s and 1960s. His book Eye Movements and Vision stands as one of the most cited publications in the area of eye movement and vision. Yarbus recorded observers' eye movements with his homemade gaze tracking suction cap device together with a self-constructed recording device. His findings showed that when different people viewed the same painting, the patterns of eye movements were similar but not identical. He figured out that when we view a complex scene, we show repeated cycles of inspection behavior. During these cycles, the eye stops and examines the most important elements of the picture. For example, when a viewer look at a portrait image The observer eye cycles periodically through a triangle on the eyes, nose, and mouth of the pictured subject. | ||
In his famous experiment, Yarbus asked the same individual to view the same painting seven times, each time with a different instruction before starting to view the image. Yarbus repeatedly studied one painting titled An Unexpected Visitor by the Russian painter Ilya Repin. He gave instructions such as “give the ages of the people” or “remember the clothes worn by the people” prior to viewing. These instructions asked the viewer to make a series of judgements about the scene, to remember aspects of the scene, or simply to look at it freely. The eye-tracking patterns recorded by Yarbus showed that the subjects visually interrogate the picture in a completely different way depending on what they want to get from it. Based on the evidence of his eye tracking studies, Yarbus speculated that the eyes would be attracted to areas packed with information. As Yarbus observed: “Depending on the task in which a person is engaged, ie, depending on the character of the information which he must obtain, the distribution of the points of fixation on an object will vary correspondingly, because different items of information are usually localized in different parts of an object.” | In his famous experiment, Yarbus asked the same individual to view the same painting seven times, each time with a different instruction before starting to view the image. Yarbus repeatedly studied one painting titled An Unexpected Visitor by the Russian painter Ilya Repin. He gave instructions such as “give the ages of the people” or “remember the clothes worn by the people” prior to viewing. These instructions asked the viewer to make a series of judgements about the scene, to remember aspects of the scene, or simply to look at it freely. The eye-tracking patterns recorded by Yarbus showed that the subjects visually interrogate the picture in a completely different way depending on what they want to get from it. Based on the evidence of his eye tracking studies, Yarbus speculated that the eyes would be attracted to areas packed with information. As Yarbus observed: “Depending on the task in which a person is engaged, ie, depending on the character of the information which he must obtain, the distribution of the points of fixation on an object will vary correspondingly, because different items of information are usually localized in different parts of an object.” | ||