Eyal M Reingold

University of Toronto | U of T · Department of Psychology

The remarkably efficient performance of chess experts reflects extensive practice with domain-related visual configurations. To study the perceptual component of chess expertise, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players during the performance of a novel double-check detection task. Chess players viewed an array of six minim...

In the field of medical image perception, the holistic processing perspective contends that experts can rapidly extract global information about the image, which can be used to guide their subsequent search of the image (Swensson, 1980; Nodine and Kundel, 1987; Kundel et al., 2007). In this review, we discuss the empirical evidence supporting three...

Much of the investigation of eye-movement control in visual cognition has focused on the influence of experimental variables on mean fixation durations. In the present paper we explored the convergence between two distributional analysis techniques that were recently introduced in this domain. First, Staub, White, Drieghe, Hollway and Rayner, (2010...

To explore the perceptual component of chess expertise, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players during a chess-related visual search task that tested anecdotal reports that a key differentiator of chess skill is the ability to visualize the complex moves of the knight piece. Specifically, chess players viewed an array of f...

Prior research has demonstrated that task instructions can influence the locations and durations of eye fixations during scene viewing. These task-related changes in gaze patterns are likely to be associated with a top-down influence of attention. In the present study we applied a saccadic-inhibition manipulation in order to detect another expected...

We introduced a novel paradigm for investigating covert attention and eye-movement control in reading. In 2 experiments, participants read sentence words (shown in blue color) while ignoring interleaved distractor strings (shown in orange color). Each single-line text display contained a target word and a critical distractor. Critical distractors w...

To examine the role of inter-word spaces during reading, we used a gaze-contingent boundary paradigm to manipulate parafoveal preview (i.e., valid vs. invalid preview) in a normal text condition that contained spaces (e.g., “John decided to sell the table”) and in an unsegmented text condition that contained random numbers instead of spaces (e.g.,“...

The divergence point analysis procedure is aimed at obtaining an estimate of the onset of the influence of an experimental variable on response latencies (e.g., fixation duration, reaction time). The procedure involves generating survival curves for two conditions, and using a bootstrapping technique to estimate the timing of the earliest discernib...

Writing is one of humankind’s greatest inventions, and modern societies could not function if their citizens could not read and write. How do skilled readers so quickly pick up meaning from squiggles on a page, and how do children learn to do so? These questions have been studied in fields ranging from vision science to cognitive psychology to educ...

The present study explored the ability of expert and novice chess players to rapidly distinguish between regions of a chessboard that were relevant to the best move on the board, and regions of the board that were irrelevant. Accordingly, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players, while they selected white's best move for a...

A key component of chess expertise is the ability to efficiently encode domain-related perceptual configurations. To explore this perceptual component of chess expertise, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players while they engaged in a chess-related "visual search" task that was designed to test anecdotal reports that a key...

The Einstellung effect is the counterintuitive finding that prior experience or domain-specific knowledge can under some circumstances interfere with problem solving performance. This effect has been demonstrated in several domains of expertise including medicine and chess. In the present study we explored this effect in the context of a simplified...

We developed a variant of the single fixation replacement paradigm (Yang & McConkie, 2001, 2004) in order to examine the effect of stimulus quality on fixation duration during reading. Subjects' eye movements were monitored while they read passages of text for comprehension. During critical fixations, equal changes to the luminance of the backgroun...

Two methods for objectively measuring eye tracking data quality are explored. The first method works by tricking the eye tracker to detect an abrupt change in the gaze position of an artificial eye that in actuality does not move. Such a device, referred to as an artificial saccade generator, is shown to be extremely useful for measuring the tempor...

Participants' eye movements were monitored in two visual search experiments that manipulated target-distractor similarity (high vs. low) as well as the availability of distractors for extrafoveal processing (Free-Viewing vs. No-Preview). The influence of the target-distractor similarity by preview manipulation on the distributions of first fixation...

In a wide range of problem-solving settings, the presence of a familiar solution can block the discovery of better solutions (i.e., the Einstellung effect). To investigate this effect, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players while they solved chess problems that contained a familiar move (i.e., the Einstellung move), as we...

In a wide range of problem-solving settings, the presence of a familiar solution can block the discovery of better solutions (i.e., the Einstellung effect). To investigate this effect, we monitored the eye movements of expert and novice chess players while they solved chess problems that contained a familiar move (i.e., the Einstellung move), as we...

The present study employed a saccade-contingent change paradigm to investigate the effect of spatial frequency filtering on fixation durations during scene viewing. Subjects viewed grayscale scenes while encoding them for a later memory test. During randomly chosen saccades, the scene was replaced with an alternate version that remained throughout...

Several current computational models of eye-movement control in reading posit a tight link between the eye and mind, with lexical processing directly triggering most "decisions" about when to start programming a saccade to move the eyes from one word to the next. One potential problem with this theoretical assumption, however, is that it may violat...

Background / Purpose: Does word recognition during reading reflect two stages, as hypothesized by the E-Z reader model (1)? To test this hypothesis, we examined if two visual manipulations (i.e. stimulus quality and case-alternation) impacted different stages of lexical processing. Participants' eye movements were monitored while they read senten...

Participants' eye movements were monitored while they read sentences in which high- and low-frequency target words were presented normally (i.e., the normal condition) or with either reduced stimulus quality (i.e., the faint condition) or alternating lower- and uppercase letters (i.e., the case-alternated condition). Both the stimulus quality and c...

The present study employed distributional analyses of fixation times to examine the impact of removing spaces between words during reading. Specifically, we presented high and low frequency target words in a normal text condition that contained spaces (e.g., John decided to sell the table in the garage sale) and in an unsegmented text condition tha...

The present study used eye tracking methodology to examine rereading benefits for spatially transformed text. Eye movements were monitored while participants read the same target word twice, in two different low-constraint sentence frames. The congruency of perceptual processing was manipulated by either applying the same type of transformation to...

Decisions about when and where to move the eyes are commonly assumed to be made independently (e.g., Findlay & Walker, 1999). Consequently, the influence of an experimental manipulation on fixation times in reading is typically analyzed without considering the possible impact of this manipulation on fixation locations. However, during reading, it i...

Participants viewed eight-item arrays containing colour photographs from two categories of scenes. Four of the eight photos depicted natural landscapes (Nature scenes) and the other four depicted urban environments (Building scenes). Participants were instructed to memorize scenes from one of the two categories (i.e., the relevant category) in prep...

To investigate the time course of predictability effects in reading, the present study examined distributions of first-fixation durations on target words in a low predictability versus a high predictability prior context. In a replication of Staub (2011), ex-Gaussian fitting demonstrated that the low predictability distribution was significantly sh...

The present experiments examined perceptual specificity effects using a rereading para-digm. Eye movements were monitored while participants read the same target word twice, in two different low-constraint sentence frames. The congruency of perceptual processing was manipulated by either presenting the target word in the same distortion typography...

Participants' eye movements were monitored in two scene viewing experiments that manipulated the task-relevance of scene stimuli and their availability for extrafoveal processing. In both experiments, participants viewed arrays containing eight scenes drawn from two categories. The arrays of scenes were either viewed freely (Free Viewing) or in a g...

In the lexical ambiguity literature, it is well-established that readers experience processing difficulties when they encounter biased homographs in a subordinate-instantiating prior context (i.e., the subordinate bias effect). To investigate the time course of this effect, the present study examined distributional analyses of first-fixation durati...

Participants' eye movements were monitored in an experiment that manipulated the frequency of target words (high vs. low) as well as their availability for parafoveal processing during fixations on the pre-target word (valid vs. invalid preview). The influence of the word-frequency by preview validity manipulation on the distributions of first fixa...

We employed a variant of the mask-onset delay paradigm in order to limit the availability of visual information in central and peripheral vision within individual fixations during scene viewing. Subjects viewed full-color scene photos with instructions to search for a target object (Experiment 1) or to study them for a later memory test (Experiment...

A modified Remember/Know (RK) paradigm was used to investigate reported subjective awareness during retrieval. Levels of processing (shallow vs. deep) was manipulated at study. Word pairs (old/new or new/new) were presented during test trials, and participants were instructed to respond "remember" if they recollected one of the two words, "know" if...

The current study investigated visual guidance and saccadic selectivity during visual search among patients with schizophrenia (SCZ). Data from a previous study (Elahipanah, A., Christensen, B.K., & Reingold, E.M., 2008. Visual selective attention among persons with schizophrenia: The distractor ratio effect. Schizophr. Res. 105, 61-67.) suggested...

The chapter highlights the theoretical and applied contributions of eye movement research to the study of human expertise. Using examples drawn from the domains of chess and medicine, the chapter demonstrates that eye movements are particularly well-suited for studying two hallmarks of expert performance: the superior perceptual encoding of domain...

The current study investigated the size and flexible control of visual span among patients with schizophrenia during visual search performance. Visual span is the region of the visual field from which one extracts information during a single eye fixation, and a larger visual span size is linked to more efficient search performance. Therefore, a red...

Three experiments introduced a recognition memory paradigm designed to investigate reported subjective awareness during retrieval. At study, in Experiments 1A and 2, words were either generated or read (generation), while modality of presentation (auditory versus visual) was manipulated in Experiment 1B. Word pairs (old/new or new/new) were present...

Over the past half century, research on human decision making has expanded from a purely behaviorist approach that focuses on decision outcomes, to include a more cognitive approach that focuses on the decision processes that occur prior to the response. This newer approach, known as process tracing, has employed various methods, such as verbal pro...

To use eye tracking to investigate age differences in real-time lexical processing in quiet and in noise in light of the fact that older adults find it more difficult than younger adults to understand conversations in noisy situations. Twenty-four younger and 24 older adults followed spoken instructions referring to depicted objects, for example, "...

Participants' eye movements were monitored while they read sentences in which high-frequency and low-frequency target words were presented either in normal font (e.g., account) or case alternated (e.g., aCcOuNt). The influence of the word frequency and case alternation manipulations on fixation times was examined. Although both manipulations had co...

Substitution tests are sensitive to cognitive impairment and reliably discriminate patients with schizophrenia from healthy individuals better than most other neuropsychological instruments. However, due to their multifaceted nature, substitution test scores cannot pinpoint the specific cognitive deficits that lead to poor performance. The current...

Participants' eye movements were monitored while they viewed displays containing 6 exemplars from one of several categories of everyday items (belts, sunglasses, shirts, shoes), with a column of 3 items presented on the left and another column of 3 items presented on the right side of the display. Participants were either required to choose which o...

The current study investigated one possible mechanism of impaired visual attention among patients with schizophrenia: a reduced visual span. Visual span is the region of the visual field from which one can extract information during a single eye fixation. This study hypothesized that schizophrenia-related visual search impairment is mediated, in pa...

Substitution tests are sensitive to frontal lobe dysfunction and reliably discriminate patients with schizophrenia from healthy individuals better than most other neuropsychological instruments. However, due to their multifaceted nature, substitution test scores cannot pinpoint the specific cognitive deficit that leads to poor performance. The curr...

In three experiments, we used eyetracking to investigate the time course of biases in looking behaviour during visual decision making. Our study replicated and extended prior research by Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, and Scheier (2003), and Simion and Shimojo (2006). Three groups of participants performed forced-choice decisions in a two-alternative fr...

Participants' eye movements were monitored while they read sentences containing biased homographs in either a single-meaning context condition that instantiated the subordinate meaning of the homograph without ruling out the dominant meaning (e.g., "The man with a toothache had a crown made by the best dentist in town") or a dual-meaning pun contex...

We tested predictions derived from the gaze cascade model of preference decision making (Shimojo, Simion, Shimojo, & Scheier, 2003; Simion & Shimojo, 2006, 2007). In each trial, participants' eye movements were monitored while they performed an eight-alternative decision task in which four of the items in the array were preexposed prior to the tria...

We measured the strength of the association between looking behaviour and preference. Participants selected the most preferred face out of a grid of 8 faces. Fixation times were correlated with selection on a trial-by-trial basis, as well as with explicit preference ratings. Furthermore, by ranking features based on fixation times, we were able to...

Recently, Glaholt & Reingold (in press) reported biases in looking behavior during eight-alternative forced-choice (8-AFC) decision tasks. We found that throughout the entire decision period, dwell duration (where a dwell is a run of consecutive fixations on an item) is longer on the chosen item than on not-chosen items. In the current study we inv...

The current study investigated whether impaired visual attention among patients with schizophrenia can be accounted for by poor perceptual organization and impaired search selectivity. Twenty-three patients with schizophrenia and 22 healthy control participants completed a conjunctive visual search task where the relative frequency of the two types...

The current study explored the effects of contextual and instructional manipulations on visual search behavior in a conjunctive search task with a distractor-ratio manipulation. Participants’ eye movements were monitored when they performed the task. Results from the present investigation demonstrated that block context modulates the temporal dynam...

A critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without affecting the processing of the next word. We tested this predicti...

A cueing paradigm was employed to examine modulation of distraction due to a visual singleton. Subjects were required to make a saccade to a shape-singleton target. A predictive location cue indicated the hemifield where a target would appear. Older adults made more anticipatory saccades than younger adults, and were less accurate for making an eye...

‘Implicit cognition’ refers to unconscious influences reflecting perception, memory, and learning, without subjective phenomenal awareness.

We review and report findings from a research program by Reingold, Charness and their colleagues (Charness et al 2001; Reingold et al. 2001a, 2001b) that employed eye-movement paradigms and provided strong support for the suggestion of de Groot (1946, 1965) and Chase and Simon (1973a, 1973b) that a perceptual advantage is a fundamental component of...

Two large, diverse samples of tournament-rated chess players were asked to estimate the frequency and duration of their engagement in a variety of chess-related activities. Variables representing accumulated time spent on serious study alone, tournament play, and formal instruction were all significant bivariate correlates of chess skill as measure...

Visual span, or the region of the visual field from which information is extracted during a fixation, may vary as a function display complexity. As display technology evolves, military tactical displays show increasing quantities of information, often across large areas. To quantify the breadth with which an operator may process information present...

Reingold and Merikle's (1988, 1990) critique of the classic dissociation paradigm identified the exhaustiveness, exclusiveness, null sensitivity, and task comparability issues as inherent problems that severely undermine the utility of this paradigm. Snodgrass, Bernat, and Shevrin (2004) attempt to provide solutions to these problems and claim to p...

Reingold and Merikle, 1988 and Reingold and Merikle, 1990 critique of the classic dissociation paradigm identified several issues as inherent problems that severely undermine the utility of this paradigm. Erdelyi (2004) extending his prior analysis (Erdelyi, 1985 and Erdelyi, 1986) points out several additional factors that may complicate the inter...

In 5 experiments, participants read text that was briefly replaced by a transient image for 33 ms at random intervals. A decrease in saccadic frequency, referred to as saccadic inhibition, occurred as early as 60-70 ms following the onset of abrupt changes in visual input. It was demonstrated that the saccadic inhibition was influenced by the salie...

In two experiments, during reading, 33 ms. flickers occurred to the left or the right of the point of gaze at random intervals. We documented a decrease in saccadic frequency following the onset of this task-irrelevant flicker. This effect was referred to as saccadic inhibition. It was found that the saccadic inhibition effect differed depending on...

This chapter examines the robustness of guidance of eye movements during visual search. Visual search is one of the dominant paradigms used for investigating visual attention. In a typical visual search task, participants have to decide whether a search display contains a designated target among distractors (nontarget elements). Consistent with maj...

It is argued here that a critical prediction of the E-Z Reader model is that experimental manipulations that disrupt early encoding of visual and orthographic features of the fixated word without affecting subsequent lexical processing should influence the processing difficulty of the fixated word without producing any processing effect on the next...

The distractor-ratio effect refers to the finding that search performance in a conjunctive visual search task depends on the relative frequency of two types or subsets of distractors when the total number of items in a display is fixed. Previously, Shen, Reingold, and Pomplun (2000) examined participants' patterns of eye movements in a distractor-r...

The effects of a study/test mismatch in the viewing mode of natural scenes on recognition memory performance were examined. At both encoding and retrieval, scenes were presented either by being divided into quarters that were displayed in a sequential cumulative fashion or by scrolling the images through the screen, thereby gradually revealing the...

During the past two decades, numerous studies have compared the effects of independent variables on explicit and implicit measures of memory in both amnesic patients and normal participants (for reviews see Moscovitch et al., 1993; Roediger and McDermott, 1993). The primary goal of these studies was to demonstrate functional dissociations between e...

The Area Activation Model (Pomplun, Reingold, Shen, & Williams, 2000) is a computational model predicting the statistical distribution of saccadic endpoints in visual search tasks. Its basic assumption is that saccades in visual search tend to foveate display areas that provide a maximum amount of task-relevant information for processing during the...

Gaze-contingent multiresolutional displays (GCMRDs) center high-resolution information on the user's gaze position, matching the user's area of interest (AOI). Image resolution and details outside the AOI are reduced, lowering the requirements for processing resources and transmission bandwidth in demanding display and imaging applications. This re...

The current study examined the relation between the difficulty of central discrimination andthe efficiency of peripheral selection in visual search tasks. Participants were asked to searchfor a target among high-, medium-, and low-similarity distractors. In Experiment 1, while theduration of current fixations increased with increasing target-distra...

Gaze-contingent multiresolutional displays (GCMRDs) have been proposed to solve the processing and bandwidth bottleneck in many single-user displays, by dynamically placing high-resolution in a window at the center of gaze, with lower resolution everywhere else. The three experiments reported here document aslowing of peripheral target acquisition...

The present paradigm involved manipulating the congruency of the perceptual processing during the study and test phases of a recognition memory task. During each trial, a gaze-contingent window was used to limit the stimulus display to a region either inside or outside a 10 degrees square centred on the participant's point of gaze, constituting the...

The present study investigated saccadic inhibition in both voluntary and stimulus-elicited saccades. Two experiments examined saccadic inhibition caused by an irrelevant flash occurring subsequent to target onset. In each trial, participants were required to perform a single saccade following the presentation of a black target on a gray background,...

Participants read or performed visual search while the normal task display was replaced for 33 ms by a transient image at random intervals. This produced a sharp reduction in saccadic frequency (saccadic inhibition) beginning as early as 70 ms following the display change. It was found that the latency of inhibition onset was determined by the diff...

Gaze-contingent multi-resolutional displays (GCMRDs) have been proposed to solve the processing and bandwidth bottleneck in many single-user displays, by dynamically placing high-resolution in a window at the center of gaze, with lower resolution everywhere else. GCMRDs are also useful for investigating the perceptual processes involved in natural...

Expert and intermediate chess players attempted to choose the best move in five chess positions while their eye movements were monitored. Experts were faster and more accurate than intermediates in choosing the best move. Experts made fewer fixations per trial and greater amplitude saccades than did intermediates, but there was no difference in fix...

Eye movements were monitored during the performance of triple conjunction search tasks. Stimuli varied in color, shape, and orientation. Across trials, the target was either present or absent, and displays consisted of 6, 12, or 24 stimuli. Stimulus discriminability was manipulated for the shape dimension, with half of the participants seeing displ...

A check detection task in a 5 x 5 section of the chessboard, containing a King and one or two potential checking pieces was employed. The checking status (i.e., the presence or absence of a check) and the number of attackers (one or two) were manipulated. It was found that the reaction time cost for adding a distractor was differentially greater in...

The present study employed the gaze-contingent window paradigm to investigate parafoveal and peripheral cueing and masking effects on saccadic selectivity in a triple-conjunction visual search task. In the cueing conditions, the information shown outside the gaze-contingent window was restricted to the feature or feature pair shared between the tar...

In three experiments, participants' visual span was measured in a comparative visual search task in which they had to detect a local match or mismatch between two displays presented side by side. Experiment 1 manipulated the difficulty of the comparative visual search task by contrasting a mismatch detection task with a substantially more difficult...

Wang, Cavanagh, and Green (1994) demonstrated a pop-out effect in searching for an unfamiliar target among familiar distractors (U-F search) and argued for the importance of a familiarity difference between the target and the distractors in determining search efficiency. In four experiments, we explored the generality of that finding. Experiment 1...

The reported research extends classic findings that after briefly viewing structured, but not random, chess positions, chess masters reproduce these positions much more accurately than less-skilled players. Using a combination of the gaze-contingent window paradigm and the change blindness flicker paradigm, we documented dramatically larger visual...

In the present paper, we present a novel gaze-controlled interface. It allows the user to magnify and inspect any part of an image by just looking at the part in question and subsequently shifting gaze to another window. No manual input is required to control this process. The interface was empirically evaluated in a multi-session experiment employ...