Eye Movement Research

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Humans have been studying eye movements for many years now. The first recorded person to publish studies that contributed to the field of eye tracking was Louis Émile Javal [1, 2] in 1878, roughly a century before computers started becoming commonly used. Javal observed human eye movement while reading and was the first to observe that eyes make a combination of rapid movements (which he called saccades) and short stops (which he called fixations). Javal conducted this experiment without the assistance of any instruments, using only his naked eye. Psychologist Raymond Dodge and his student T.S. Cline developed the first camera-based technique for registering eye movement in 1901 [3]. They used a falling plate camera (also referred to as a photo-chronograph) to measure light reflected from the cornea. However, their method required the subject’s head to be motionless and was only capable of recording horizontal eye movement. Only a few years later, motion picture photography was applied to record eye movement. This technique was useful because it allowed for a frame-by-frame analysis of the eye’s movement allowing for quantitative research on a solid basis**. During the 1930’s Miles Tinker [4] conduced comprehensive studies on eye movement in reading using photographic techniques to record data. He tested the effects that variables such as font, typeface, font size, and layout had on the speed of reading and the patterns of eye movement. In 1947 Paul Fitts [5], who later became famous for his Fitts Law, began using motion picture cameras to study the movements of pilots’ eyes as they were landing airplanes. His area of interest was their eye movement when using cockpit controls and instruments. Fitts’ study was the first ap... ... middle of paper ... ...zing a gesture and then using them as a unique input. Making a gesture consists of moving the pointing device in a designated pattern in a designated amount of time. Gestures could be used to input a command such as “save document” or “new document.” Using eye tracking as a input device in human-computer interaction is proving to be extremely useful to severely disabled users. Users in this category may only be capable of controlling their eyes, and are in need of a method to communicate. Using eye tracking as a pointing and gesture input device, users in this category are able to use computer interfaces and communicate in ways that was never before possible. Disabled users are able to make selections and even type text through the use of a keyboard display using dwell time as a selector, or through the use of a set of gestures corresponding to the alphabet.

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