The act of task difficulty and eye-movement frequency for the 'Oculo-motor indices'

Author(s):  
Minoru Nakayama ◽  
Koji Takahashi ◽  
Yasutaka Shimizu
2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Andrzejewska ◽  
Anna Stolińska

In this article, we attempted to examine the issue of the existence of differences in eye move-ment of school-age students as they solve tasks of different difficulty levels in the sciences and natural sciences (computer science, mathematics, physics, biology). Categories of the task’s difficulty level were established on the basis of two types of criteria: subjective (an evaluation made by the subjects) and behavioural (connected to the correctness of their solution). The relationships of these criteria with the visual activity parameters, which were considered to be indicators of mental effort, were identified. An analysis of the data obtained enabled the observation of discrepancies in categorizing difficulties of the tasks on the basis of subjective and behavioural criteria. A significant and strong correlation was noticed between task difficulty level, determined by the percentage of correct answers, and the fixation parameters, although such a relationship with the blink parameters was not found. There was no correlation of the activity of the eye movement parameters, considered to be mental effort indicators, with a student’s opinion about the task’s difficulty level. On the basis of the investigations made, it can be stated that the fixation duration average can be taken as an index of the difficulty level of the task being solved.


1980 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 307-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Mather ◽  
James R. Lackner

Two experiments were performed to evaluate the influence of movement frequency and predictability on visual tracking of the actively and the passively moved hand. Four measures of tracking precision were employed: (a) saccades/cycle, (b) percent of pursuit movement, (c) eye amplitude/arm amplitude, (d) asynchrony of eye and hand at reversal. Active and passive limb movements were tracked with nearly identical accuracy and were always vastly superior to tracking an external visual target undergoing comparable motion. Proprioceptive information about target position appears to provide velocity and position information about target location. Its presence permits the development of central eye-movement programmes that move the eyes in patterns that approximate but do not exactly match, temporally or spatially, the motion of the hand.


Author(s):  
Youngsook Bae

The crossover trial study aimed to identify the saccadic eye movement (SEM) frequency to improve postural sway (PS) and plantar cutaneous sensation (PUS) in young adults. The 17 participants randomly performed 0.5-, 2-, and 3-Hz SEM. The SEM frequency was determined to allow the target to appear once per 2 s (0.5 Hz), twice per second (2 Hz), or thrice per second (3 Hz). SEM performance time was 3 min with a washout period of 5 min. PS and PUS were measured at baseline and during 0.5-Hz, 2-Hz, and 3-Hz SEMs using a Zebris FDM 1.5 force plate. PS was determined by measuring the sway area, path length, and speed of center of pressure (COP) displacement, and PUS was determined via the plantar surface area (PSA). In PS parameters, there was a significant difference among the SEM frequencies in the COPsway area PSAleft foot and PSAright foot. Compared to that at baseline, COPsway area decreased at 0.5 Hz and 2 Hz, while PSAleft foot and PSAright foot increased at 2 Hz. These results suggest that 2 Hz SEM may improve PS and PSA.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie Zhukov ◽  
Sieu Khuu ◽  
Gary E McPherson

The ability to sight-read traditional staff notation is an important skill for all classically trained musicians. Up until now, however, most research has focused on pianists, by comparing experts and novices. Eye movement studies are a niche area of sight-reading research, focusing on eye-hand span and perceptual span of musicians, mostly pianists. Research into eye movement of non-piano sight-reading is limited. Studies into eye movement of woodwind sight-reading were conducted in the 1980s and early 2000s, highlighting the need for new research using modern equipment. This pilot study examined the eye movements of six woodwind (flute, clarinet) undergraduates of intermediate-to-advanced skill level during sight-reading of scores of increased difficulty. The data was analysed in relation to expertise level and task difficulty, focusing on numbers of fixations and fixation durations. The results show that as music examples became more difficult the numbers of fixations increased and fixation durations decreased; more experienced players with better sight-reading skills required less time to process musical notation; and participants with better sight- reading skills utilised fewer fixations to acquire information visually. The findings confirm that the efficiency of eye movements is related to instrumental and sight-reading expertise, and that task difficulty affects eye movement strategies.


Author(s):  
Trent W. Victor ◽  
Joanne L. Harbluk ◽  
Johan A. Engström
Keyword(s):  

2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sören Kliem* ◽  
Christoph Kröger* ◽  
Nico Bayat Sarmadi ◽  
Joachim Kosfelder
Keyword(s):  

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Bei der Behandlung der posttraumatischen Belastungsstörung (PTBS) nach einem Typ-II-Trauma werden im klinischen Alltag gegenwärtig unterschiedliche traumabearbeitende Interventionen eingesetzt. Fragestellung: Wie werden die Verbesserungen in verschiedenen Symptombereichen (plötzliches Wiedererleben, Vermeidung, Übererregung, Dissoziation und zusätzliche Symptomatik) in Abhängigkeit von dem Einsatz unterschiedlicher traumabearbeitender Interventionen von den Behandlern retrospektiv eingeschätzt? Methode: Aus einer Umfrage unter Psychologischen Psychotherapeuten (N = 272) wurden die Fälle ausgewählt, bei denen die Therapeuten (1) ein Ereignis nannten, das einem Typ-II-Trauma zugeordnet werden konnte, und (2) angaben, traumabearbeitende Interventionen gemäß der traumafokussierenden, kognitiven Verhaltenstherapie (TF-KVT), der Methode des Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR-Methode) oder der Psychodynamisch-imaginativen Traumatherapie (PITT) durchgeführt zu haben (n = 37). Außerdem beurteilten die Therapeuten retrospektiv die Verbesserungen in den Symptombereichen zu Therapieende. Ergebnisse: Über 40% der Therapeuten gaben an, die Vorstellungsübungen bzw. Bearbeitung des Täter Introjekts gemäß der PITT eingesetzt zu haben, gefolgt von den traumabearbeitenden Interventionen der TF KVT (35.1%) und der EMDR Methode (21.6%). Die Therapeuten, die Interventionen eines der beiden zuletzt genannten Verfahren einsetzten, schätzten die Verbesserungen in den verschiedenen Symptombereichen höher ein als diejenigen, die angaben, eine Intervention gemäß der PITT durchgeführt zu haben. Schlussfolgerungen: Die retrospektiven Einschätzungen der Verbesserungen durch die Therapeuten stehen im Einklang mit den Empfehlungen der Behandlungsleitlinien zur PTBS.


2019 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-118
Author(s):  
Andrés Antonio González-Garrido ◽  
Jacobo José Brofman-Epelbaum ◽  
Fabiola Reveca Gómez-Velázquez ◽  
Sebastián Agustín Balart-Sánchez ◽  
Julieta Ramos-Loyo

Abstract. It has been generally accepted that skipping breakfast adversely affects cognition, mainly disturbing the attentional processes. However, the effects of short-term fasting upon brain functioning are still unclear. We aimed to evaluate the effect of skipping breakfast on cognitive processing by studying the electrical brain activity of young healthy individuals while performing several working memory tasks. Accordingly, the behavioral results and event-related brain potentials (ERPs) of 20 healthy university students (10 males) were obtained and compared through analysis of variances (ANOVAs), during the performance of three n-back working memory (WM) tasks in two morning sessions on both normal (after breakfast) and 12-hour fasting conditions. Significantly fewer correct responses were achieved during fasting, mainly affecting the higher WM load task. In addition, there were prolonged reaction times with increased task difficulty, regardless of breakfast intake. ERP showed a significant voltage decrement for N200 and P300 during fasting, while the amplitude of P200 notably increased. The results suggest skipping breakfast disturbs earlier cognitive processing steps, particularly attention allocation, early decoding in working memory, and stimulus evaluation, and this effect increases with task difficulty.


2002 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoinette R. Miller ◽  
J. Peter Rosenfeld ◽  
Matthew Soskins ◽  
Marianne Jhee

Abstract The P300 component of the event-related potential was recorded during two blocks of an autobiographical oddball task. All participants performed honestly during the first block (Phone), i.e., the oddball stimuli were phone numbers. During the second block (Birthday), in which the oddball stimuli were participants' birthdays, a Truth group (N = 13) performed honestly and a Malinger group (N = 14) simulated amnesia. Amnesia simulation significantly reduced P300 amplitudes, both between groups and within the Malinger group (Phone vs. Birthday), possibly because of an increase in task difficulty in the Malinger condition. Analysis of scaled amplitudes also indicated a trend for a feigning-related alteration in P300 topography. Bootstrapping of peak-to-peak amplitudes detected significantly more (93%) Malinger individuals than bootstrapping of baseline-to-peak amplitudes (64%). Bootstrapping also provided evidence of a feigning-related amplitude difference between oddball stimuli (i.e., Phone > Birthday) in 71% of Malinger group individuals. In this comparison, the peak-to-peak measure also performed significantly better in intraindividual diagnostics.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-311
Author(s):  
José David Moreno ◽  
José A. León ◽  
Lorena A. M. Arnal ◽  
Juan Botella

Abstract. We report the results of a meta-analysis of 22 experiments comparing the eye movement data obtained from young ( Mage = 21 years) and old ( Mage = 73 years) readers. The data included six eye movement measures (mean gaze duration, mean fixation duration, total sentence reading time, mean number of fixations, mean number of regressions, and mean length of progressive saccade eye movements). Estimates were obtained of the typified mean difference, d, between the age groups in all six measures. The results showed positive combined effect size estimates in favor of the young adult group (between 0.54 and 3.66 in all measures), although the difference for the mean number of fixations was not significant. Young adults make in a systematic way, shorter gazes, fewer regressions, and shorter saccadic movements during reading than older adults, and they also read faster. The meta-analysis results confirm statistically the most common patterns observed in previous research; therefore, eye movements seem to be a useful tool to measure behavioral changes due to the aging process. Moreover, these results do not allow us to discard either of the two main hypotheses assessed for explaining the observed aging effects, namely neural degenerative problems and the adoption of compensatory strategies.


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