Eye movements and choice times in mirror image pattern discrimination

This paper studied mirror image and nonmirror image pattern discrimination by measuring adults' eye movements as they responded to spatially simple or spatially complex stimulus pairs. Two measures were derived from the eye movement data; the average position of the subject's gaze as a function of time (scanpath), and the distribution of eye positions sampled over the patterns (dwell distribution). The data show that spatial complexity has a qualitative influence on the processing of mirror and nonmirror patterns, that spatially complex pairs tend to be scanned from left-to-right, and that peripheral features are not usually directly fixated. The data also bear on theories of symmetry perception, and indicate that symmetry is not always perceived in a holistic fashion.