Abstract
Looking at the future path and/or the tangent point (TP) have been identified as car drivers’ gaze targets in many studies on curve driving. Yet little is known in detail about these "fixations to the road". We quantitatively analyse gaze behavior at the level of individual fixations in real on-road data. We find that while gaze tracks the TP area, this pattern consists of fast optokinetic movements (smooth pursuit and fast resetting saccadic movements). Gaze is not “fixed” to the TP. We also relate eye-movements to a reference direction fixed to a point on the trajectory of the vehicle (curve exit), showing that fixations lose their pursuit-like character in this rotating system. The findings are discussed in terms of steering models and neural levels of oculomotor control.
Highlights
In many everyday tasks, gaze is an active component in the control of action sequences
The visual angle between gaze and the tangent point can be readily seen in the visualization, and while it is generally small, gaze often appears to be directed not at the tangent point itself, but the driver’s lane in the zone beyond the tangent point
Most often the pattern appears to be one of multiple guiding fixation targets on the road, within a few degrees of each other, between which the driver alternates. Going beyond this sort of phenomenological analysis of “gaze targets”, we can ask: what is the pattern of eye movement/stability within each individual “fixation”? Plotting horizontal gaze position against time (Fig. 2, top) reveals fixations themselves not to be stable with respect to the vehicle
Summary
Gaze is an active component in the control of action sequences. Different types of eye movements are chosen flexibly and integrated into ongoing behavior The goal of this complex behavior is to maintain on the retinae images appropriate for the generation of accurately directed actions and stable perceptions in the face of the complex image transformations that are due to motion of objects, self-motion of the observer, and the movements of the eyes themselves. How this remarkable feat is accomplished in a great variety of everyday tasks humans are capable of, and what are the visual and other representations that support this rich repertoire of behaviors, is only beginning to be understood (Land, 2006; 2007; Tatler and Land 2011)
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