[INDIVIDUAL FEATURES VIEWING EMOTIONALLY MEANINGFUL IMAGES]

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Ophthalmology

Background:

• Eye movements provide insights into visual attention and cognitive processing.
• Affective images elicit distinct emotional responses that can influence perception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate individual eye movement characteristics when viewing images with varying emotional content.
• To determine if eye movement patterns can differentiate between focal and scanning visual attention types.

Main Methods:

• Participants (n=20) viewed images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS).
• Eye movement parameters, including region of interest detection and fixation duration, were recorded.
• Statistical correlations and group differences were analyzed.

Main Results:

• Significant correlations were found between viewing different emotional image categories (negative, neutral, positive) for region of interest detection and fixation duration.
• Eye movement parameters differed significantly between participants with predominantly focal versus scanning visual inspection trajectories.
• Individual viewing trajectories remained consistent across different emotional image presentations.

Conclusions:

• Eye movement patterns during affective image viewing are reproducible and reflect individual differences in visual attention.
• Emotionally salient images can be utilized with eye movement analysis to assess an individual's dominant visual attention type.
• This approach holds potential for evaluating visual attention strategies in various contexts.