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Visual Memory Within and Across Fixations

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Eye Movements and Visual Cognition

Part of the book series: Springer Series in Neuropsychology ((SSNEUROPSYCHOL))

Abstract

A single eye fixation encompasses approximately 25,000 square degrees of the visual world, roughly 180° horizontally by 130° vertically (Harrington, 1981). The quality of the visual information that is available in this total area is quite variable, however. The area that is seen most clearly, with the highest resolution, corresponds to that part of the world that falls on the fovea, but this includes only 3 or 4 square degrees out of the 25,000 that are available. Visual acuity drops off very rapidly with increasing retinal eccentricity, being reduced by 50% at a distance of 5° from the fovea and by 90% at 40° (Hochberg, 1978). Because of these acuity limitations, humans make eye, head, and body movements to fixate objects of interest in the world; somehow the contents of these successive fixations must be combined across movements to produce a coherent representation of the visual environment. How this combination is accomplished has puzzled psychologists and vision researchers for over a century.

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Authors
  1. David E. Irwin
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA, 01003, USA

    Keith Rayner

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag New York Inc.

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Irwin, D.E. (1992). Visual Memory Within and Across Fixations. In: Rayner, K. (eds) Eye Movements and Visual Cognition. Springer Series in Neuropsychology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2852-3_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-2852-3_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4612-7696-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4612-2852-3

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