Eye Movements and Attention

When it comes to measuring attention, or quantifying it in any way, it is not easy to pin down what exactly we measure. Advances in technology have enabled the construction of complex models of certain aspects of attention and identified many of the structures and factors involved in the changing nature of attention. In this chapter, we will go with a working definition of attention as the concentration or focusing of mental effort on sensory or internal mental events. In terms of eye movements, we are mainly concerned with visual attention, pertaining to events and external stimuli in the environment, but not exclusively so. Eye movements may also offer an opportunity to measure internal or subjective events and states. This chapter will look at what might be possible beyond direct, point and click gaze control, in inferring subjective states. The aim is to identify and explain those measures from cognitive psychology which are most promising in terms of future technologies for gaze based human computer interaction