ABSTRACT
The author examines the oculomotor control process during scanning. She discusses some experiments concerning the initial saccadic response to a patterned set of elements in a situation where there is a conflict between a prepared general program and the adjustment required by the instantaneous properties of the display. She then examines the combined effects of a prepared program and of the current state of local information processing as manifested in the data of another experiment in which two objects have to be successively fixated. She also discusses the relative elasticity of the different components of eye movement behavior during reading. The author describes how the choice of a first target in a simple scanning sequence depends on general eye movement trends. She also considers how the characteristics of one among a sequence of fixations may vary according to demands of local information processing.
