Looking for ideas: Eye behavior during goal-directed internally focused cognition
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Updated: Feb 27, 2026

Eye Tracking During A Complex Aviation Task For Insights Into Information Processing
Published on: April 4, 2025
Sonja Walcher1, Christof Körner1, Mathias Benedek1
1Institute of Psychology, University of Graz, Universitätsplatz 2, 8010 Graz, Austria.
Abstract:
Humans have a highly developed visual system, yet we spend a high proportion of our time awake ignoring the visual world and attending to our own thoughts. The present study examined eye movement characteristics of goal-directed internally focused cognition. Deliberate internally focused cognition was induced by an idea generation task. A letter-by-letter reading task served as external task. Idea generation (vs. reading) was associated with more and longer blinks and fewer microsaccades indicating an attenuation of visual input. Idea generation was further associated with more and shorter fixations, more saccades and saccades with higher amplitudes as well as heightened stimulus-independent variation of eye vergence. The latter results suggest a coupling of eye behavior to internally generated information and associated cognitive processes, i.e. searching for ideas. Our results support eye behavior patterns as indicators of goal-directed internally focused cognition through mechanisms of attenuation of visual input and coupling of eye behavior to internally generated information.
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