Eye Turns Research Articles

Eye–Head–Trunk Coordination While Walking and Turning in a Simulated Grocery Shopping Task

Previous studies argued that body turns are executed in an ordered sequence: the eyes turn first, followed by the head and then by the trunk. The purpose of this study was to find out whether this sequence holds even if body turns are not explicitly instructed, but nevertheless are necessary to reach an instructed distal goal. We asked participants to shop for grocery products in a simulated supermarket. To retrieve each product, they had to walk down and aisle, and then turn left or right into a corridor that led towards the target shelf. The need to make a turn was never mentioned by the experimenter, but it nevertheless was required in order to approach the target shelf. Main variables of interest were the delay between eye and head turns towards the target shelf, as well as the delay between head and trunk turns towards the target shelf. We found that both delays were consistently positive, and that their magnitude was near the top of the range reported in literature. We conclude that the ordered sequence of eye – then head – then trunk turns can be observed not only with a proximal, but also with a distal goal.

The attribution of attention: 9‐month‐olds’ interpretation of gaze as goal‐directed action

The current study distinguishes between attributions of goal-directed perception (i.e. attention) and non-goal-directed perception to examine 9-month-olds' interpretation of others' head and eye turns. In a looking time task, 9-month-olds encoded the relationship between an actor's head and eye turns and a target object if the head and eye turns were embedded in a sequence of multiple, variable actions with equifinal outcomes, but not otherwise. This evidence supports the claim that infants of this age may attribute perception, at least goal-directed perception, to others and undermines arguments that gaze-following at this age consists only of uninterpreted reflexes. The evidence also suggests alternative interpretations of the typical errors infants make in standard gaze-following procedures. Implications for infants' understanding of perception and attention in both human and non-human agents are discussed.

Reflections on International Narrative Research on the Example of The Tale of the Three Oranges

The Tale of the Three Oranges, also known in different cultures as L'amour des trois oranges , As tres cidras do amor, La brutta saracina, La mora tuerta, is one of the most favourite fairy tales. The tale can be characterised by a remarkably long text history, it has been recorded in hundreds of variants, and studied by means of the historic-geographic method. On the example of The Tale of the Three Oranges the author has pointed out several barriers and problematic areas in international legend research. The Tale of the Three Oranges - also known as L'amour des trios oranges or As tres cidras do amor, but also as La brutta saracina, La mora tuerta - is one of the most favourite fairytales in the Mediter- ranean region and in the Orient. The tale is somewhat less known in Europe, since it is not included in Grimms' Fairy Tales and other popular fairy tale anthologies. The story is about a Prince, who finds - often after a long adventurous quest - three beautiful maid- ens inside three oranges, lemons or other magic fruits. As soon as the Prince manages to win the third as his bride, he becomes care- less and leaves the girl alone to bring her proper royal clothes, carriage and retinue. He leaves his bride waiting on top of a tree, hanging over a pond, a spring or a well. There comes an exception- ally ugly dark-skinned slave-girl to scoop water, sees the reflection of the Orange Girl in the water, considers the reflection her own, and angrily breaks her mug - no more work from now on! Hearing the Orange Princess laughing in the treetop, the slave-girl realises that she has made a mistake and in a blink of the eye turns from an ignorant black slave girl into a person of sophisticated guile. Hav- ing heard the Orange Princess' story, she devises a cunning plan to deceive the Prince by assuming the identity of the princess. She either pricks the Princess' head with a needle upon which the Prin- cess transforms into a dove, or pushes her into the water upon

Interaction of Retinal Image and Eye Velocity in Motion Perception

When we move our eyes, why does the world look stable even as its image flows across our retinas, and why do afterimages, which are stationary on the retinas, appear to move? Current theories say this is because we perceive motion by summation: if an object slips across the retina at r°/s while the eye turns at e°/s, the object's perceived velocity in space should be r + e. We show that activity in MT+, the visual-motion complex in human cortex, does reflect a mix of r and e rather than r alone. But we show also that, for optimal perception, r and e should not summate; rather, the signals coding e interact multiplicatively with the spatial gradient of illumination.

Gaze following at 12 and 14 months: Do the eyes matter?

Two questions were addressed: (1) Is the gaze following of infants under 18 months sensitive to eye status? (2) Do they construe looking as referential behaviour? Corkum and Moore (1995) concluded that, prior to 18 months, gaze following is responsive to the head turn alone (H), because infants followed such turns as frequently as conjoint head and eye turns (H/E). Since their results may have been compromised by an absence of targets and a relatively lengthy response time, we retested a 12‐ and 14‐ month group with H/E, H and eyes closed (H/Ecl) cues in the presence of targets and with reduced response time. To examine comprehension of referentiality, two more H/E cues were shown—(1) saying ‘oh wow’ while turning and (2) actively scanning the targets—each intended to increase gaze following if infants regard looking as seeing something. Fourteen‐month‐olds, but not 12‐month‐olds, responded significantly more to the standard H/E cue than to the H and H/Ecl cues, indicating the importance of eyes for gaze following at this age. Neither age group, however, responded more to the two ‘enhanced’ H/E cues than to the standard. In a second experiment, a new 14‐month group was tested without targets, and again, responding was significantly greater to H/E than to H and H/Ecl. It was concluded that by 14 months, the eyes are co‐equal with the head in controlling gaze following, but whether such head/eye turns are understood as object‐directed is problematic.

Infant gaze following based on eye direction

This experiment investigates the role of eye direction in infant joint visual attention. Sixty‐three infants aged from 8 to 19 months participated in a training study in which they were shown adult eye turns in association with the appearance of an interesting sight to one or the other side. It was only at 18–19 months of age that infants showed a reliable ability to use the adult eye turns to predict the side of appearance of the target. this finding suggests that before 18 months of age, infants do not recognize the significance of eye direction for joint visual attention.

The effects of head and eye turns on the right ear advantage in dichotic listening

The aim of the present experiment was to investigate the effects of head and eye turns on the ear advantage in dichotic listening (DL) to CV-syllables. Since head and eye turns also mean focusing attention to either the left or right side in space, a second aim was to evaluate recent arguments that ear advantages seen in DL are caused by the perceived position in space of the sound source. Forty right-handed females had 36 trials of CV-syllables under four different instructions. One group ( n = 20) was instructed to turn their head (but not their eyes) to the right, the left, or straight ahead during stimulus presentations. The fourth condition was a standard (no instruction) condition. A second group ( n = 20) had the same instructions but were told to turn their eyes instead of their heads. Conditions were pseudo-counterbalanced across subjects. Consistent with other studies, results showed a right ear advantage (REA) in both groups during all conditions. However, the REA was largest for the standard condition. Also, more subjects showed a REA during the standard condition, and especially compared to the turn-right condition. It is concluded that dichotic performance is not caused by selective attention to either side in space, and that lateral turns of the head and the eyes contralateral to the left hemisphere have an inhibitory (if anything) effect on the REA.

Diane di Prima: Extending La Famiglia

In her scandalous little book Memoirs of a Beatnik (1969), Diane di Prima tells how one afternoon someone handed her a copy of Allen Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems (1956); she kept thinking the phrase breaking ground, and she felt she was about to meet her brothers.1 In fact, a year later she did meet Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Another year later Lawrence Ferlinghetti, introducing her book This Kind of Bird Flies Backward (1958), wrote: Here's a sound not heard before. voice is gritty. eye turns. heart is in it. Di Prima was meeting brothers members of the Beat confraternity. Reacting to postwar consumerism, conformity and boredom, they were in spiritual crisis. They reacted with wild expenditures of energy: fast cars, wild parties, jazz, sex, drugs and kicks. This is the confraternity of John Clellon Holmes' novel Go (1952), generally credited as the first and most vivid literary account of early Beat life. Characters can be recognized as Ginsberg and Kerouac, with portraits too of Herbert Huncke, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. Kerouac's On the Road came out in 1957. media promptly promoted the movement. By 1958, when Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind appeared, Esquire also published The Philosophy of the Beat Generation. In 1959, when Burroughs' Naked Lunch was issued, so was di Prima's 13 Nightmares. Mainstream and counterculture seemed in competition to perpetrate the outrageous and the perverse and in competition to define basic values. As a difficult daughter flouting parental standards, di Prima affirmed familial relationships; in both work and personal life she was seeking out a family of affinity. Family has multiple meanings and, as New York Times has reported (September 2, 1988), family law is even now the battleground of social revolution. Biologically, the term is genetic and implies descent from a common ancestry. It also includes relationships recognized by law, such as marriage and adoption. Sometimes it refers to members of a household who function together as a family. dispersed extended family of blood relatives and in-laws may include attached and honorary members. Most broadly, and especially in a religious spirit, one may

Auditory-visual integration in neonates: A signal detection analysis

The ability of neonates to integrate auditory and visual information into a single percept was investigated using a signal detection methodology. Thirty-two infants (mean age = 4.6 days) were presented with an auditory stimulus (the word “baby” spoken once, or repeated four times) from either directly ahead (catch trials), or to the infant's side (signal trials); lateral displacements of 45° left or right, and 90° left or right were used. A video recording of neonates' oculomotor behavior during the experimental session was made for later independent scoring by two judges. The methodology enabled separate performance indices of sensitivity and response bias to be calculated for both ipsilateral and contralateral eye turns. Subsequent analyses of these indices showed that while neonates displayed a significant bias toward not responding ( p < .001), ipsilateral eye turns occurred more frequently than expected by chance ( p < .001). The frequency of eye movements was not influenced by either the duration of the auditory stimulus, the degree of lateral displacement, or whether the sound was presented from the left or right of the midline. The methodological implications of these results are discussed in relation to previous investigations of auditory-visual coordination.

Relationship between effective intensity of auditory stimulation and directional eye turns in the human newborn

To examine Schneirla's biphasic hypothesis that effectively weak stimulation results in approach-type responses and effectively strong stimulation results in withdrawal-type responses, 90 dB white noise stimuli were presented to twenty-five, 2-day-old female infants. Based on prior investigation this stimulus was expected to be effectively strong when presented at the right ear and effectively weak when presented at the left ear. Results obtained from electro-oculargraphic recording of the infants’ eye movements supported this hypothesis in that significant towards-turning occurred when the stimulus was presented at the left ear and significant away-turning occurred when the stimulus was presented at the right ear.

Properties of the optokinetic motor fibres in the rock lobster: build-up, flipback, afterdischarge and memory, shown by their firing patterns.

ABSTRACT The properties of sets of motor fibres responding to both clockwise and anticlockwise rotation have been studied in the oculomotor nerve of the rock lobster. There are probably three, but perhaps four, units in each set. None of these fibres has statocyst input, but there is weak input onto the tonio fibres from the antennal joints such that the eye turns in the direction toward which e antenna points. Many preparations show bilateral visual input onto all fibres but the degree of coupling between the eyes is very variable, and at times can be nearly totally absent. Depending on the speed of rotation the fibres show a gradual build-up in frequency, during rotation in the preferred direction, interrupted by flipbacks. During the fast stage of the resulting nystagmic movements all agonistic fibres can be completely inhibited and all antagonistic ones can be activated, usually for a period of about 0·5 sec. Fibre activity is demonstrated which appears to underlie an ‘optokinetic memory’ of contrasting target position in the visual field. It consists of (a) very prolonged afterdischarges for a stationary striped pattern (b) resumption of discharges at an appropriate frequency after dark periods up to 2 min, and (c) adjustment of such frequencies to changes in stripe position during the dark period. The fibres show habituation to repeated stripe movement but the response can be dishabituated by passive rotation of the animal. The largest visual responses were obtained to intermediate speeds of stripe rotation (about 2°/sec).

SEESAW NYSTAGMUS ASSOCIATED WITH CHOROIDITIS AND POSITIVE NEUTRALIZATION TEST FOR TOXOPLASMA

NYSTAGMUS in which one eye turns rhythmically up and down while its fellow moves contrarily, in the nature of a seesaw, is strange and rare. The only case that I have been able to find in the literature is one reported in 1914 by Maddox.¹In this report no mention was made of the site of the lesion or of its possible cause. In the case to be reported here there is likewise no evidence as to the site of the lesion, nor is the causative agent proved although a possible etiologic factor suggests itself. <h3>REPORT OF A CASE</h3> A white man, aged 51 came to the Mayo Clinic on Oct. 11, 1944, complaining of loss of vision. His occupation had been that of attendant at a service station for automobiles. He had been myopic since childhood and had worn glasses for thirty years. His present difficulty began four