ECEM 2017: Abstracts, August, 20^th to 24^th, 2017, University of Wuppertal, Germany, Edited by Ralph Radach, Heiner Deubel, Christian Vorstius & Markus J. Hofmann.

"the source code is publicly available at https://bitbucket org/diaztula/gaze_movements_fsm/."

"Numerous researches show that reading process includes extrafoveal perception of a text, and its role increases when reading skills develop. The purpose of the investigation was to determine variations of foveal and extrafoveal perception of geometrical objects depending on the competence level. University students and 7-8-year-old children were asked to find an object with a target shape as quick as possible. Each of the 96 trials presented four geometrical objects located at the same distance from the central fixation point. The target shapes, the target and the distractors similarity, and the habitualness of their orientation were varied. The results indicate that a target shape was recognized by the first saccade or without any saccades by the adults in the case of mild contrast of a target and the distractors. Children demonstrated certain extrafoveal perception only in the case of very high contrast. Note that the adults showed greater variety of perceptual strategies in comparison with the children. The results suggest that greater competence is accompanied by folding of searching saccades and enrichment of perception strategies. However, these strategies are strongly individual and their dependence on the subject’s personal and cognitive features needs further investigation. Supported by RFBR, grant No. 15-06-06319. The results suggest strong individual differences in children’s perceptual strategies. Supported by RFBR, grant No. 15-06-06319 Previous cross-cultural eye-tracking studies have found that culture shapes eye movements during scene perception. These researches have been limited to the American, Chinese and African samples. However there are no evidences how Russians view photographs with focal object on a complex background. This study recruited 11 participants from the Western and 11 participants from the Eastern regions of Russia. Experimental material and the procedure were the same as Chua et al. (2005) to maintain the reliability and validity. Each experiment consisted of study phase and recognition phase. All images had only one focal object on a complex background. The study phase had 36 pictures and the recognition phase had 72 pictures. The number of fixations, first fixations times on focal objects and fixation durations were significantly differed (F=20,161, df=1, p<0,001) between groups. Subjects from Western regions fixated more on the focal objects, tended to look on them more quickly and recognized more objects. Fixation durations of subjects from Eastern regions during background viewing were smaller. Thus, subjects from Eastern and Western parts of Russia demonstrated different strategies of scene perception due to the cultural differences in these regions. This study was supported by grant RSСF №15-18-00109. We studied eye movement parameters in reading syntactically ambiguous sentences with relative clause ambiguity in native Russian speakers. They disambiguated globally ambiguous (G), locally ambiguous with early (E) and late (L) closure, and unambiguous (U) sentences. The reading times while reading L and E but not G were significantly longer than in reading U. Less fixation numbers and regression frequencies while reading U compared with those for L and E determined shorter reading time for U. The increase in total reading times indicates more mental efforts in disambiguating E and L. We did not reveal any differences between eye movement parameters in reading U and G. Consequently, disambiguating G was a little more difficult than analysis of U. Noteworthy results consisted in absence of differences between reading times while reading G and E. However, reading time in reading L was longer than reading time for G and E because of less fixation numbers and regression frequencies in reading G and E. This implies difficult disambiguating L in Russian with early closure domination. Our results in the opposite way coincide with results in English with difficult disambiguating E assuming late closure domination. Supported by Russian Foundation of Basic Research. Vection describes the sensation of ego-motion induced by moving visual stimuli that cover a large part of the visual field. One of the main problems in vection research is to identify the vection perception periods using objective indicators. In the present study we used the eye tracking to examine parameters of optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) during vection perception. Vection was evoked by the rotating optokinetic drum with black and white stripes in CAVE virtual reality system. Rotational velocity was 20, 40 or 60 deg/s. 16 participants with healthy vestibular systems took part in this study. Subjects passively observed rotating stimulation and pressed the button to indicate the vection appearance. We analyzed durations of OKN slow phases in period of 10 seconds after pressing a button. It was found that for all stimuli velocities OKN slow phases were longer in these 10 seconds periods compared to other time periods of eye movement recording (F=44,5, p<0,01). It is suggested that the increase in OKN slow phases durations reveals the attention shift from moving stimuli perception to self-motion illusion perception. Therefore the OKN dynamics may be used as objective indicator for vection periods identification. This work was supported by grant RFH №17-36-01101. We measured an eye-hand span (EHS) i.e. delay between the gaze position on a note and the performed music measured by musical signs number. The EHS varied significantly both in relation to each musician as well as between musicians from -3 to 14 symbols. We revealed a direct correlation between an EHS and the tempo stability and also a reliable invert correlation between an EHS and the number of errors at sight reading - an objective criterion of sight-reading ability. When performing the more difficult pieces the pianists demonstrated the shorter visual fixations separated by saccades of low amplitudes. While sight-reading the easiest musical piece the EHS is maximal and on average constitutes 4-5 symbols, for the most difficult piece – 2-3 symbols. Therefore, EHS is indicative of the difficulty of a music piece for sight-reading. (Supported by the Russian Foundation for Humanities №16-08-01082) "