Abstract
To gain an insight into the way adults visually observe the movements of other people, including children, we videotaped the movements of an individual who started walking from a stationary state and the movements of a pattern of luminous dots likened to the figure of a man, a woman and a child. By means of a Visicon Eye-camera, the eye movements of adult subjects reacting to these stimuli were measured and analyzed. A summary of our findings is as follows.
1. In terms of the total frequency of fixation point, total duration of fixation point, average reaction time to reach the initial fixation point, frequency and duration of fixation onto a human object, luminous dots and background and frequencies of fixation on the upper and lower parts of each image we found that there were not any clear differences in eye movement whether the objects were plain human figures or a pattern of luminous dots.
2. From the patterns of the occurrence of fixation points when the object, whether their human or luminous dots, is moving, it was made clear that many of the subjects set eyes on the object immediately after it started moving and followed the moving object.
3. Based on the reply to the question about the image comprised of luminous dots, all of the subjects who were seeing the luminous dots object or its background were not able to regard it as human when the dotted image was immobile while they were able to regard it as human when the object was moving.
From the above, we concluded that there was some difference in the adults' recognition of the human object and the luminous dots object when they stood still. This had nothing to do with the eye movements. When the objects were moving, the subjects recognized the human objects and the luminous dots to be human using gazing eye movement and pursuit eye movement. These results could be very helpful in understanding the movement of the patients, whether grown-up or infant, in dental clinics.
