ABSTRACT
To search the visual environment, visual attention must be directed to selected regions of the visual field. As we saw in the previous chapter, the fovea is the most sensitive part of the retina, so to encode detailed visual information, our eyes need to be moved so that this area is focused on the visual location in which we are interested. When viewing a scene, the eyes are reoriented about three times a second by making saccades, or eye movements that allow the fovea to focus at one location in the scene after another. In between saccades the eyes are stationary, and during these fixations visual information is encoded. These fixations take in snapshots of information about the visual scene. So, one of the first questions that arises is ‘How does the eye know where to go, and how does selection take place?’ Second, where is the information stored for further processing?
