Eyes Draw Auxiliary Lines in Interpreting Images

This study aims at finding a typical pattern in the eye movement, when human obtains an interpretation of a presented image. We conducted experiments where subjects looked at abstract artworks and commercial posters. We compared the eye track lines with subjects’ statements about the interpretation of the image. The results show the tendency that eyes draw lines in the velocity between saccade and pursuit eye-movement as we call slow saccade line (SSL), following objects in the image corresponding to the meaningful units (sentences) of subjects’ statement about image interpretation. Furthermore, when they reached an insight, i.e., obtained a new interpretation after feeling difficulty in understanding the image, the eye track changed into SSLs after exploring in the velocity of fast saccade. We found this shift of velocity enables to acquire long-term memory of the obtained interpretation.