ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a research which examines how the availability and usage of particular peripheral information affects children's and adults' plans or anticipatory schemata for sampling the visual environment. This research enhances the understanding of the relation between available stimulus information and sequences of eye fixations—the link between perception and action. Eye movement and fixation records provide voluminous data that can be subjected to many different types of analyses. The interaction of foveal and peripheral processing in conjunction with cognitive strategies has been frequently demonstrated in the literature on visual search. Efficiency in visual scanning is a function of task demands, and for stimulus recognition or discrimination, exhaustive scanning may not be the most efficient scanning strategy. Venger has related these concepts of exhaustiveness and efficiency in his developmental model of visual scanning behavior. The developmental sequence proceeds from partial to exhaustive to efficient scanning.
