ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on visual attention, and because of the heavy—but not total—linkage of visual attention to eye movements, these movements are the subject. It describes an analogy of the traveling gaze of attention to own travel around a geographical environment, before describing eye movement measures and the influences on those movements and then introducing a computational model of visual scanning. A corresponding analysis can be made of the forces that influence the allocation of visual selective attention to gain information to update assessment of a dynamic, evolving situation Certain aspects of visual scanning behavior are controlled by what appears to be habit. Thus, the tendency in most Western cultures to visually search fields from top to bottom and left to right appears to relate to reading habits. Several features of the physical layout of visual space can either help or hurt the redirection of visual attention from one information source to another.
