Date reserved

Abstract - People do not use fixation when they visually explore the world. They do it only if they have to detect a minute change in a tiny target, which improves sensory input. Otherwise, researchers can force them to fixate to preserve topographic accuracy. i.e. for the purpose of delivering a stimulus to a particular place on the retina. This is best done under direct inspection of the retina with a scanning laser ophthalmoscope (SLO) and sophisticated software. However, that is not practical due to low availability and high cost.

No matter how hard you try, the eyes never stand completely still. While fixating, the eyes show 3 kinds of involuntary movements: Tremor, slow drifts, and small, fast saccades. The literature has been clear about that for over a half-century, but some interpretations are still controversial. When people read, they perform saccades through the text, but they also make pauses between them, during which information is acquired. These pauses have often been called “fixations”, but I will show you why they are really not.

https://www.ski.org/users/manfred-mackeben