Different Channel Presentation Of The Visual Representation In The Construction Of Eye Movement Mechanism

Mental imagery is one special kind of mental process. It occurred when perceptual information was accessed from memory, and it was that people reproduced the image coming out to the object which once realized and retained in the brains. Visual image was not only one type of image that people used most in daily life, but also one type of image that was studied most in cognitive psychology at present. With the prompt development of the eye tracking techniques, the technique of eye movement have become another important means in mental imagery demonstration research besides the behavior experiment and the brain imaging study. In the past twenty years, one concentrates point mainly is the research of relationship between imagery and perception in the cognition research of visual image. Much attention has been attached to the functional equivalence of imagery and perception by cognitive psychologists. As the main explicit form of inner cognitive process of imagery and perception, the eye movements are studied can deepen the discussion of problems about eye movements during imagery and the functional equivalence of imagery and perception. It is known to all that eye movements play a functional role in visual perception, it can help people quickly and accurately acquire to the whole consciousness of vision objects. The relationship between imagery and perception is very close and people can give rise to the experience of "seeing with the mind's eye" during imagery construction, so the existence relationship between eye movements and imagery whether or not also closely.Our experimental research was composed of three parts including three experiments, all of which were aimed to explore the regulation and function of eye movements during visual imagery construction. The first two experiments examined eye movements of visual imagery construction process in the three-phase experimental tasks of "perception-interference-image" by visual modalities, the last experiment inspected language-mediated eye movements of visual imagery construction process in the absence of a visual world, namely the "blank screen paradigm".The results of data analysis supported the following hypothesis:1. There definitely exits eye movements during the process of visual mental imagery construction, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was visual or spoken. In addition, it isn't disorderly behavior, but orderliness of eye movements. The order of scanning of eye movements during imagery was correlated to the original order during perception in the three-phase experimental tasks of "perception- interference-image". In the "blank screen paradigm", participants listening to a scene description made eye movements that correspond to directions indicated in the described scene.2. Eye movements play a functional role in visual imagery. It would bring function influence to the vividness and quality of a mental image if eye movements during visual imagery were restrained, and the completion of visual imagery would also be embarrassed. In the average fixation duration, subjects who fixed their gaze centrally were evidently higher than the others who free their gaze. But in the average saccade amplitude, subjects who fixed their gaze centrally were significant shorter than the others who free their gaze.3. There was markedly individual difference in eye movements. When individual experience and understanding was different, it would affect the quality of imagery and eye movements; however, this impact wasn't enough to achieve the degree of functional. The higher of the visual imagery understanding level, the shorter of the average fixation duration, and the longer of the average saccade amplitude.4. Imagery with the characteristic of quis-picture is an analogical representation mode. Imagery and the external object of perception do not have the one to one corresponding relation. If we didn't control the spatial extent of the visual mental images, eye movements could occur in a small spatial extent; moreover, the full range of amplitudes of eye movements also could introduce some variability and distortion (compressions, expansions, directional bias and drifts) of the original pattern.