Data from: Eye and head movements are complementary in visual selection

Participants showed highly systematic changes in behaviour, revealing clear differences in the principles underlying selection by eye and head. Eye movements were more likely to move in the direction of visible information—horizontally when viewing with a horizontal slot, and vertically with a vertical slot. Head movements showed the opposite and complementary pattern, moving to reveal new information (e.g. vertically with a horizontal slot and vice versa).

These results are consistent with a nested system in which the head favours exploration of unknown regions, while the eye exploits what can be seen with finer-scale saccades.

Usage notes

Angular Distribution for Eye and Head Movements Distribution of gaze shift angles during scene viewing. Indoor and outdoor scenes were viewed for ten seconds through gaze-contingent windows controlled by either the eye or the head. Windows could be Open (no window), Square (equal horizontal and vertical span), Horizontal (greater horizontal span), or Vertical (greater vertical span).

Gaze shift angles were classified into 16 equal pi/8 bins, and the data indicate the proportion of shifts in each bin. In addition, angles were more broadly classified as horizontal (+/- 3pi/16 from the horizontal axis) or vertical (+/- 3pi/16 from the vertical axis), and the horizontal bias (H_bias) was calculated as the proportion of horizontal gaze shifts divided by the sum of horizontal and vertical shifts. SolmanFoulshamKingstone_DistributionData.xlsx