Taking a Close Look at Visual Attention with the Gaze-Contingent Display Paradigm

Marc Pomplun
Visual Attention Lab
Department of Computer Science
University of Massachusetts at Boston

The technique of gaze-contingent displays can be used
to directly measure parameters of visual attention during
natural tasks, which otherwise can only be estimated
indirectly or by brief stimulus presentation. In a
visual search task with a gaze-contingent window, a
round window is always centered on the subject's current
gaze position. We can show, for example, all task-relevant
information inside the window, and only restricted or no 
information outside the window. In three experiments, this 
technique is used to investigate the influence of task 
difficulty, concurrent task performance, and expertise on 
the visual span, and also to study the influence of 
peripheral information on the central processing in a 
visual search task.