The Mechanism Of Eye Movements In Visual Mental Imagery

As one of the information representative forms, visual mental image is a up-down information processing based on past experiences. With perception as its comparative baseline, the characteristics, mental and brain mechanism of visual image were deeply studied in the past using research paradigms such as measurement, response time techniques and brain functional location.There were special literatures discussing eye movement during visual imaginary process before(Hebb, 1968; Neisser, 1967, 1969), and recently, experiments were conducted to further explore the phenomena(Brandt, Stark, 1997; Bruno Laeng, 2002). Using ASL-501 eyetrack systems as the main experimental tool, this paper examines eye movement of imaginary process in the two-phase experimental tasks of "perception-image" and eye movement of imaginary tasks induced by instructions, and the results are as follows:(1) There definitely exits intentional eye movement in visual image. Eye movement holds an important position in visual image and plays a functional role, and if it is restrained, the completion of visual image would be also be restrained.(2) The understanding degree to visual imaginary content is a primary factor to affect imaginary eye movements, the higher of the visual imaginary understanding level, the shorter of the fixation duration, and the longer of interfixation duration, and the larger of the interfixation distance.(3) Visual imaginary process in working memory, it is a task processed with advanced mental loads, and requires relatively more cognitive resources.