Implicit hidden small-world network that controls the movement of the eye in a visual search

Abstract

In visually searching for a target symbol out of a number of alternatives, which may include not only symbols from the Latin alphabets but also Arabic, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, Greek, and Russian letters and numerals, and mathematical symbols, the time required to find the target, i.e., the response time, follows Hick's law, which states that the response time is proportional to the logarithm of the number of alternative symbols. How does movement of the human eye enable us to find the target in such a relatively short time? To examine this, we present a new hypothesis on the eye movement in a visual search, where the point of gaze, evaluated from movement of the eye across a monitor, is controlled by a hidden small-world network. First, in this study, we obtained experimental data for the points of gaze. A histogram of incremental movements of the point of gaze showed a power-law distribution. Then, using the histogram, we showed that the hidden network is a small-world one.