Visual search in split screen

Abstract

When viewing pictures of natural scenes, viewers tend to make initial leftward saccades. They also tend to move their eyes to the center of target objects. This paper investigates visual behaviors in split screens. Saccades and fixations were recorded from 5 participants, each viewing 150 pairs of pictures in split screens. The task was to look for person. The results were opposite to previous studies. First, there was a rightward bias in participants' first eye movement when looking for person in split screens. Even if the target person was overt on the left side of the initial presentation, participants also presented initial rightward bias but the effect was much attenuated. Second, participants tended to stop moving their eyes before the eyes arrived the center of the target object when the target object was overt on initial presentation. Besides, participants did not stop moving their right eyes until they were able to uncover the scenes of the whole target object when the target object was hidden on initial presentation.