Visual Representation Construct And Scanning Image Features Of Eye Movements

Visual imagery plays an important role in people's daily life.The development of visual imagery restricted the development of intelligence.It is one of the essential abilities to jobs like athlete,pilots,etc.Recently,eye movements were found to be related with visual imagery closely. Meanwhile,although researchers have long investigated how cognitive processes influence eye movements,only recently have they begun to look into the reciprocal relationship and ask how eye movements might influence cognitive processes.However,it is at the starting stage of studying both to features of eye movements in mental imagery and function of eye movements in mental imagery.On the basis of past researches,the main purpose of this study is to:analyze features of eye movements in image construction and image scanning both after visual perception and verbal description;Explore issues such as functions of visual imagery,relationship between visual imagery and perception,the role of eye movements in cognitive processing,etc.;find a way to improve spatial intelligence,and offer some new ideas on the development of artificial intelligence.Six experiments were conducted to find out features of eye movements during image constructing and image scanning.Eye movements during image constructing after visual perception were studied in experiment1.The results indicate that eye scanpaths during imagery phase reenacted those of perception; consistency between eye movements during imagery and perception influenced the correctness of imagery;restricted eye movements during imagery decreased correctness of recall.In experiment 2,eye movements were recorded in the same condition with experiment 1 but prevented rehearsal before imagery.Correctness of recalling declined when preventing rehearsal. Fixation counts were prominent more in disturbing condition than that of non-disturbing condition, which meant that cognitive process was more difficult to the former.But regression analysis indicated positive linear relationship between scanpaths of imagery and that of perception in both conditions,and the strength of relatedness of the perception and imagery scanpaths between the two conditions showed no difference.It seemed that memory of scanpaths had not been destroyed by the interfering task.Eye movements of imagery constructing and retelling that based on verbal description was analyzed in experiment 3.The results showed that imagery constructing was interfered in central fixation condition;orientation and order of eye movements in listening phase was consistent with that of description;the degree of relatedness between listening and retelling scanpaths in each individual trial predicted the degree of accuracy of spatial retelling for the trial.In experiment 4,eye movements of imagery constructing and recognition was studied.The results indicated that accuracy of visual judgments to verbal description was lower in central fixation condition than that of free vision condition;there was significant difference in fixation counts between the two groups,the same way as how fixation counts influenced recognition in visual perception;fixation counts was less when listening and recognizing pictures included color information,just like parallel processing in color perception.Eye movements in two different image-scanning paradigms were compared in experiment 5. The results showed that different cognitive processes were embedded in different paradigms. Participants required more time to shift their focus over the imaged stimulus in the KBR paradigm. More fixations,more saccades,and rarer saccade distance were found when they scanned in the KBR task.Detailed analysis showed that participants scanned the whole distance from the original point to the target point in KBR paradigm,while the scanning distance were much shorter in FP paradigm.The scan effect in KBR paradigm vanished when gazing direction was restricted.Eye movements in perception of the two paradigms were similar with that of imagery.Experiment 6 found that imagery scan effect existed when subjects finished the mental scanning task that based on verbal description.That is,scanning time increased linearly with the increasing distance.Scan effect vanished when fixations were limited,indicated that eye movements were functional to mental scan.This work reached the following conclusions:â‘ eye movements play functional role both in imagery construction and imagery scanning,visual imagery processing is simulation(or reconstruction) of visual perception;â‘¡features and the role of eye movements during imagery similar to that of perception,which confirmed the functional equivalence of imagery and perception;â‘¢Features of eye movements during imagery can be explained by internal graphic representation, while embodied cognition theory explains why external eye movements exist in internal image representatioh:The results did not support theory of proposition representation.This work verified that eye movements play functional role both in imagery construction and in imagery operation,and supported the theory of pictorial representation of imagery.A new view to imagery processing research was also provided by this study.The results offered empirical evidence to embodied cognition.This study investigated features of eye movements in imagery,as well as effects of eye movements to imagery,which would enrich theories of eye movements.This research studied imagery by eye-movement recording,it is a breakthrough to traditional reaction time paradigm,and got insight to imagery processing that cannot be revealed by reaction time.For practice,the results suggested that ability of imagery processing maybe promoted by guiding the eye movements.The consistency of eye movements between imagery and perception enlightened that train of perception would improve the corresponding imagery possessing ability.More imagery task will be enrolled to verify the conclusion above in the future.Mechanisms of eye movements in visual imagery will be studied from cognitive neuroscience view.