Scanpath repetition in memory for scenes

In several papers I have examined whether people make the same eye movements when they see an image for a second time (e.g. when recognising it during a memory test).

Recently, in collaboration with colleagues from Lund University in Sweden, I have been applying a new method for comparing scanpaths to this question. This method, called "MultiMatch", confirmed that eye movement scanpaths are more similar when compared between the same person than when compared between different people.

Data

The scanpath data compared in Foulsham and Underwood (2008) and Foulsham et al., (2012) is now available for other researchers here. The text file lists the coordinates and duration of fixations made by 21 participants viewing 45 images on two occasions. The same data is also included as a MATLAB file. If you use this data please cite its original source (Foulsham & Underwood, 2008).

MultiMatch code

A toolbox implementing the MultiMatch method, written in MATLAB by Marcus Nystrom at Lund University, is available here. This is a work in progress, so please let me have any comments or queries. For more details, see the references below.

References

Dewhurst, R., Nystrom, M., Jarodzka, Halszka., Foulsham, T., Johansson, R., & Holmqvist, K. (In press). It depends on how you look at it: Scanpath comparison in multiple dimensions with MultiMatch, a vector-based approach. Behaviour Research Methods.

Foulsham, T., & Kingstone, A. (In press). Fixation-dependent memory for natural scenes: An experimental test of scanpath theory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Foulsham, T. & Underwood, G. (2008). What can saliency models predict about eye movements? Spatial and sequential aspects of fixations during encoding and recognition. Journal of Vision, 8 (2), 6, 1-17. [LINK TO PAPER]

Foulsham, T., Dewhurst, R., Nystrom, M., Jarodzka, H., Johansson, R., Underwood, G., & Holmqvist, K. (2012). Comparing scanpaths during scene encoding and recognition: a multi-dimensional approach. Journal of Eye Movement Research, 5(4). [LINK TO PAPER]

Jarodzka, H., Holmqvist, K., & Nystrom, M. (2010). A Vector-based, Multidimensional Scanpath Similarity Measure. In ETRA '02: Proceedings of the 2010 symposium on eye tracking research and applications, ACM, New York.