Advancing Area Activation toward a General Model of Eye Movements in Visual Search

Abstract

Many everyday tasks require us to perform a visual search. Therefore, an adequate model of visual search is an indispensable part of any plausible approach to modeling integrated cognitive systems that process visual input. Because of its quantitative nature, an absence of freely adjustable parameters, and support from empirical research results, the area activation model is presented as a promising starting point for developing such a model. Its basic assumption is that eye movements in visual search tasks tend to target display areas that provide a maximum amount of task-relevant information for processing. This chapter reports the results of a study that tackles the shortcomings of the current model and provides a variety of quantitative data on saccadic selectivity in the visual search. It discusses how these and related data will be used to develop the area activation model toward a general model of eye movements in visual search.