Eye Movements, Eye

Blinks, and Behavior

Nicole Tindall, Kylie Gray,
and Sarah Leis
Part I: Eye Movements
and the EOG
Nicole Tindall
 The Control of Eye Movements
 Eye movements are used to fixate objects so that they
fall on the fovea of the eye
 Occipital and frontal cortices are involved in eye
fixation
 The eye muscles are innervated by the 3rd
(oculomotor), 4th (trochlear), and 6th (abducens)
cranial nerves
 Three sets of muscles are used to move the eyes:
• Superior and inferior rectus
• Lateral and medial rectus
• Superior and inferior obliques
 Voluntary vs. Involuntary Eye
Fixations
 Voluntary Fixations: when the eye focuses on
an object of choice
• Example: reading
• Controlled by the prefrontal cortex
 Involuntary Fixations: constantly occuring
 Controlled by the occipital cortex
 Types of Eye Movements
 Saccadic- movements from one fixation point
to the next
 Saccade variables:
 Saccade latency- time between presentation of stimulus
and fixation
 Saccade amplitude- distance covered by eye during
saccade
 Direction of movement- whether it is horizontal or
vertical movement
 Velocity- speed of the saccade
 Fixation pause time- occurs between fixations
 Types of Eye Movements (Cont’d)
 Smooth Pursuit- movement the eyes make
when following a moving object
- Example: following a bird in the sky

 Smooth Compensatory- this movement

corrects for differences in head tilt so that the
image remains upright
 Types of Eye Movements (Cont’d)
 Nystagmoid- abnormal oscillations of the eye
 Causes:
1. Eye defects
2. Impairment of vestibular (balance) system
3. Impairment of visual or vestibular pathways in the CNS
 Rapid Eye Movements (REM):
 Occur during sleep
 Last anywhere from a few minutes to more than a
half-hour
 Eye Blinks: (3 types)
 3 Types of Eye Blinks
1. Voluntary blink: consciously close the eyes
2. Blink Reflex: when the eyes blink to act as a
defense mechanism in response to a
potentially harmful stimulus
3. Keeps the cornea healthy by keeping the
surface moist
• Occurs about 15,000 times/day (about 15-20
times/min in relaxed state)
 Recording Eye Movements/Blinks

 Four methods:
1. Contact-lens method
2. Corneal reflection method
3. Television camera scanning
4. Electrooculogram (EOG)
 Electrooculogram (EOG)
 Records the movements (and direction) of the eyes
by electrodes placed over the muscles that move the
eye
 Can have binocular or monocular set-up (binocular
more reliable)
 Head must be kept still so the center of the visual
field is constant
 Ideal impedance of the electrodes is under 2,000
ohms (we have been dealing with impedances under
50 Kohms)
 The EOG Can Record:
 Saccadic movements
 Smooth pursuit movements
 Nystagmus
 Convergence and divergence of the eye
 REM during sleep
 EOG Complications
 3 problems to be cautious of:
1. Small magnitude of EOG signal
2. Skin potential that are the same frequency as the
EOG signal
3. Slow drift- steady deflection of recording in one
direction
• Caused by unclean electrodes and poor contact with the
skin
 Binocular Electrode Placement
 Electrodes A & B are
used to measure
horizontal eye
movements
 Electrodes C & D
measure vertical eye
movements
 Electrode E is the
ground
 EOG Recording

Channel 1: one second timer; Channel 2: horizontal unipolar reading; Channel

3: horizontal bipolar reading; Channel 4: marking channel with artifact noise
Part II: Eye Movements
and Behavior
Kylie Gray
Mental Activity and Eye Movements
 Primary Function of Eye Movements

 Allow change in eye position to focus on objects of

interest

 Two different kinds of eye movement:

 1. Saccadic

 2. Pursuit

 Video
 Eye Movements and Learning
 Paired – Associates Learning
 (Haltrecht & McCormack, 1966)
 1. Subject sees word pairs, one word at a time
 2. Subject then sees stimulus words
 3. Asked to recall second word of word pairs as stimulus words presented
(response words)

- Hypothesized that subjects consolidated during initial phase (response-

learning) then made connection in a second phase (hook-up)

- (McCormack, Haltrecht, & Hannah, 1967)

- Fixation of response words decreased as learning progressed, whereas time spent
viewing the stimulus words increased
Viewing time of response and stimulus words diverged more quickly when subjects
earned as easy list than a difficult one
- Eye movement pattern varies with efficiency and stage of learning and may differ
with difficulty of the learning task
 Eye Movements, Problem Solving,
and Laterality
 Problem Solving
 ( Nakano, 1971) Subjects presented with 2 horizontal arrays of pictures under 3
conditions:
1. no problem solving required
2. when the pics were used in the solution of a problem
3. after problem solving
- avg. number of eye fixations was greatest when pictures were needed to solve the
problem and least after problem solving was completed

- ( Ehrlichman and Barrett, 1983) Saccadic eye movement during 2 kinds of cognitive
activity:
1. Verbal
2. Visual ( did not require viewing stimuli)

- More eye movements to questions calling for verbal processes than visual imagery
- Reflect differences in internal sampling or shifts in cognitive operations
 Hemispheric Dominance
 Eyes move left or right in a consistent manner after asking a question that required some
thought

- The eyes move rightward for verbal analytic problems and leftward for spatial problems

- Gur (1975) – right-handed males were studied

- Eye movements – left for spatial problems and right for verbal when the experimenter sat
behind them, however, when experimenter sat in front the movements moved predominately to
one side regardless of problem type
- Left – handers were uncorrelated with problem type , even when experimenter sat behind
- Greater degree of lateralization for right-handers was found

- (Neubauer, Schulter, & Pfurtscheller, 1988) Greater EEG activation in the hemisphere
contralateral to predominant direction of gaze was observed for both left-movers and
right-movers
 Eye Movements and Reading
 Reading Efficiency
 Buswell (1920) Eye movement reading patterns of students at 13 levels from
first grade to college
 Results of reading skills :
1. steady decrease in number of eye fixations per line of reading material
with higher grade levels
2. fixations became shorter in duration
3. number of regressive movements decreased from an average of 5.1 per
line for first graders to .5 for college students

- More efficient readers made fewer and shorter duration eye fixations and had fewer
regressive movements than inefficient readers
 Reading Disabilities and Eye
Movements
 Lefton (1978) – Studied eye movement patterns of fifth-grade children with reading
disabilities while they did a letter-matching task
 Results : Needed an unusually large number of eye fixations to do the task

 Abnormal eye movement patterns are the result of poor reading, and that

training in systematic gathering of information should help poor readers

- Pavlidis (1981) – Reported differences between dyslexics and normal

reader’s eye movements in a tracking task
- Resuts : 3 types of hypothesis:
- 1. erratic eye movements reflect problems that dyslexics have with the
reading material
- 2. erratic eye movements cause dyslexia
- 3. erratic eye movements and dyslexia are symptoms of independent but
parallel brain deficits
 Eye Movements and
Psychopathology
 Schizophrenia
 Holzman, Proctor, & Hughes (1973) – difficulty following a slowly moving
target that is in continuous motion
 Iacono (1988) – inability to produce intact smooth eye movements

 Pursuit-tracking deficits are under genetic control and that it could possibly be
used as a marker for individuals who may be predisposed to becoming
schizophrenic
 It has been suggested that the deficit has its basis in a disorder affecting the
frontal eye fields – leads to inability to inhibit saccades
 Study done on manic depressives using lithium carbonate - didn’t worsen
pursuit performance, which supports the idea that smooth pursuit dysfunction
is specific to schizophrenia
 Eye Movements and Perception
 Gould & Schaffer (1967) – eye movement recordings indicated that sbujects spent
more time fixating patterns that exactly matched a memorized standard than on
those that differed, suggesting that detailed comparisons of features were being
made

 Scan Paths
 Noton & Stark ( 1971) – analyzed eye movements of subjects while they viewed different
patterns in a “learning phase” and “recognition phase”
 Analyses of eye movements indicated that subjects followed similar paths for a given
pattern, and the sequence of movements was usually the same in the recognition phase as
it was in the learning phase.
 Suggests that memory for features of a picture is established sequentially by the memory
of eye movements required to look from one feature to the next
 Pictoral Information
 Mackworth & Morandi (1967) – portions of a picture rated as highly informative by one
group of people were fixated more frequently by another group of individuals who
examined the pictures while their eye movements were measured.

 Information one wishes to derive from a visual scene will determine the pattern of eye
movement used in examining the picture

 Loftus (1972) – durations of eye fixations did not affect recall of a picture, but the
number of fixations made during a fixed period of viewing did affect later recognition
 The greater number of fixations, the more likely the person was to recognize the picture at
another time
 Initial fixes were on informative regions initially and the less informative detail received a
greater portion of the fixations later in the viewing sequence
 Part III: Eye Illusions
and the Startle Response
Sarah Leis
 Muller-Lyer Illusion
 There has been some attention paid to the
study of eye movements while persons
experience various kinds of visual illusions.
This is one example.
 Muller-Lyer Illusion (Cont’d)
 With prolonged inspection the magnitude of
the illusion decreases.
 One hypothesis: Due to feedback provided by
erroneous eye movements
 If eye movements restricted to one portion of
the figure less 411 will be fed back
An experiment that supports the eye
movements hypothesis
 Festinger, White, and Allyn

 Found the Muller-Lyer illusion became less

powerful when eye movements were made
over the entire figure than when only one part
of the figure was fixated.
 Rebound Illusion
 If a target moving at a constant velocity and tracked
by the eyes comes to an abrupt stop, it appears to
rebound sharply backward.
 Can occur when the eyes pursue a luminous object in
the dark.
 Caused by an overshoot of the target by the eye at the
point at which the target stops.
 Suggests that position information during tracking is
derived from efferent signals rather than feedback
from the muscles.
 EB Eye Blink Stats
 Typical blink (measured by
EOG) is about 380
microvolts in amplitude and
lasts 120 msec.
 Spontaneous eye blinks
occur throughout the day.
 On average, 15-20 blinks a
minute
 Interestingly, adults need
only 2-4 blinks a minute to
keep the eyeball moist
 So most blinks are
unnecessary for a
physiological viewpoint
 Cognitive Activity and Eye Blinks
 Activities that lead to thought lead to an increase in blinking.
 Andreassi (1973) reported a significant increase in EB
frequency when subjects were required to solve anagrams than
when resting.
 Tecce (1992) found that people conversing or involved in an
interview showed increases in blink frequency
 Blink frequency decreased when individuals gave close
attention to outside visual events, perhaps to facilitate
information processing
 Oculomotor system is very sensitive to fatigue, boredom and
lapses inattention
 Eye Blinks and Information
Processing
 Long closure duration: the time eyes remain closed
during blinking
 Long closure duration is related to alertness
 During reading there is an inhibition of blinking
which grows with interest in the material.
 A flurry of blinks occurs as the reader turns the page
 Stern (1985) found that blink rate and duration were
both less in a visual task than an auditory one.
 Blink suppression is due to increased cognitive
demands that directs attention to task-relevant stimuli
 Eye Blinks and Information
Processing (Cont’d)
 Blinks are delayed until decisions about external
stimuli have been made and responses to those
stimuli completed.
 So, blink rate and duration may be related to
cognitive functions such as decision-making and
discrimination.
 Fogarty and Stern (1989) found that a lower blink
rate was found for a 6-item than a 2-item memory set.
 This suggests that a lower blink rate reflects the
greater attention demanded for performing the more
difficult task involving 6 items
 Blink Rate and Stress
 Increased blink frequency generally reflects negative mood
states such as nervousness, stress and fatigue
 “Nixon Effect”: During President Nixon’s resignation speech
he blinked over 50 times per minute. He also displayed rapid
bursts of blinks (3 per second), showing overall stress and a
negative emotional state
 Negative emotional states that accompany poor performance
have been related to increases in blinking
 More positive states are accompanied by decreased blink
frequency
 Tecce (1992) found that blink rate slows after hypnotic
relaxation and successful problem solving
 Hedonia-blink hypothesis: decreased blinking is related to
pleasant feelings, whereas increased frequency of blinks
accompanies unpleasant mood states
Eye Blink and the Startle Response
 Startle response: the bodily reactions to a strong,
rapid, unexpected stimulus
 Physiological changes produced by the startle
response include increases in eye blink (EB), heart
rate, skin conductance, etc.
 The fastest and most stable component of the
response was the EB with a latency of 40 msec
 Other fast components were widening of the mouth
(70 msec), forward head movement (80 msec), and
tightening of neck muscles (90 msec).
 Startle Response in Emotion
 Vrana, Spence and Lang (1988) used a high intensity
noise burst to elect a startle response while college
students viewed pleasant and unpleasant slides
 The startle response (measured by EB magnitude),
was largest when subjects viewed unpleasant stimuli
and smallest for positive stimuli, as compared to
neutral slides
 The pleasant-unpleasantness of stimuli was
confirmed by the participants’ ratings
Emotional Ratings and Physiological
Arousal
 Witvliet and Vrana (1995) compared EB startle
magnitude and latency under conditions of negative
and positive imagery that included both high and low
arousal components. (EX: fear and joy are negative
and positive and are both high arousal. Sadness
(negative) and pleasant relaxation (positive) are both
low arousal.)
 Found that EB magnitudes were larger and latencies
were faster during negative as compared to positive
imagery.
 Higher arousal also led to larger magnitude and
shorter latency EBs
 Positive and Negative Sensory
Experience
 The EB component of he startle response has also been used to
evaluate the emotional effects of positively and negatively
rated odors.
 Miltner, Matjak, Braun and Brody (1994) exposed subjects to
an unpleasant odor (hydrogen sulfide) and a plesant odor
(vanilla). They compared EB amplitude.
 The negative odor significantly enhanced EB amplitude in
comparison with neutral air
 Reduction in EB with positive odor was not significant
 This may have occurred because the emotional valence of
vanilla was only about half as positive as the emotional
valance of the hydrogen sulfide was negative
 Positive and Negative Sensory
Experience (continued)
 Ehlichman (1997) followed up the study and used a
design in which participants experienced either a
pleasant odor or an unpleasant one. (not both)
 The odors wrre equal in terms of emotional valence
ratings (pleasant= coconut. Unpleasant= limburger
cheese)
 The unpleasant odor increased the magnitude of the
EB and unlike the Miltner study, the pleasant odor
attenuated the EB complex of the startle response.
EB Component of Startle in Clinical
Research
 The notion that schizophrenics have difficulty with
assimilation of percepts or processing sensory stimuli has
existed for some time
 Inhibition of the EB in startle reaction can index deficits in
early information processing and may be related to underlying
vulnerability factors
 A number of studies have indicated that schizophrenics
patients show reduced startle inhibition at short prepulse
intervals
 Normal individuals who score as “psychosis prone” on the
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory also show less
startle inhibition compared to control individuals
 More Clinical Research
 Hamm (1997) studied the EB startle reflex in people with high
fear (phobics) and low fear (non phobics) of animals or
mutilation.
 Participants viewed slides of fear relevant, unpleasant, neutral
and pleasant scenes.
 Animal and mutilation phobics showed larger EB facilitation
than the non phobics when viewing un-pleasant scenes.
 They showed greater EB magnitudes when viewing feared
pictures than the nonphobics viewing the same or other
unpleasant slides.
 So, EB startle reflex indexes the individual’s basic
motivational disposition and can provide information for the
assessment of fear responses.
 Also, FYI, individuals with simple and social phobias, PTSD,
and panic disorder all show enhancement of the startle EB
while imagining scenes or viewing pictures that are
threatening.
 References
Andreassi, J.L. (2000). Psychophysiology:
Human Behavior &Physiological Response.
Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, Inc.
Figure: taken from Psych 360- Lab 8- online at
http://webpub.allegheny.edu/employee/a/adale
/p360/lab8.html