Looking and Acting: Vision and eye movements in natural behaviour

The human visual system is amazing in its ability to guide us in a diverse range of everyday tasks - driving, preparing food, reading - in addition to leisurely pursuits such as ball games, or reading music. Somehow, without conscious effort, our eye... Read more

The human visual system is amazing in its ability to guide us in a diverse range of everyday tasks - driving, preparing food, reading - in addition to leisurely pursuits such as ball games, or reading music. Somehow, without conscious effort, our eyes find the information we need to negotiatethe world around us. Only recently, however, has it become possible to explore just how it is that our eyes can supply the brain systems controling our limbs with the information they need to carry out these tasks. Thanks to the development of head-mounted eye trackers, we can now explore thestrategies that the eye movement system uses in the the initation and guidance of action.Looking and Acting explores a wide variety of visually guided activities - from sedentary activities such as reading music, or drawing, to dynamic behaviours such as driving or playing cricket. It proposes that the eye movement system has its own store of knowledge about where to find the mostappropriate information for guiding action - information not often available to conscious scrutiny. Thus, every action has its own specific repertoire of linked eye movements. The book starts with a brief background of eye movement studies. Part two reviews observations and analyses of differentactivities. Finally, the book looks at visual representations, the neurophysiology of the brain systems involved, and the roles of attention and learning.Opening up a whole new field in eye movement research, the fascinating new book will be of great interest to all vision scientists, (psychologists, physiologists, ophthalmologists) whether at professional, graduate, or advanced undergraduate levels. Less