Alfred Lukyanovich Yarbus (Альфред Лукьянович Ярбус; 3 April 1914 in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
– 1986) was a Soviet
psychologist
A psychologist is a professional who practices psychology and studies mental states, perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and social processes and behavior. Their work often involves the experimentation, observation, and interpretation of how indi ...
who studied
eye movement
Eye movement includes the voluntary or involuntary movement of the eyes. Eye movements are used by a number of organisms (e.g. primates, rodents, flies, birds, fish, cats, crabs, octopus) to fixate, inspect and track visual objects of interest ...
s in the 1950s and 1960s.
Yarbus pioneered the study of
saccadic exploration of complex images, by recording the eye movements performed by observers while viewing natural objects and scenes. In his 1965 book ("Eye Movements and Vision"), Yarbus showed that the
trajectories
A trajectory or flight path is the path that an object with mass in motion follows through space as a function of time. In classical mechanics, a trajectory is defined by Hamiltonian mechanics via canonical coordinates; hence, a complete traj ...
followed by the gaze depend on the task that the observer has to perform. The gaze tends to jump back and forth between the same parts of the scene, for example, the eyes and mouth in the picture of a face. If the observer was asked specific questions about the images, his/her eyes would concentrate on areas of the images of relevance to the questions. Yarbus also invented a
suction cup
A suction cup, also known as a sucker, is a device or object that uses the negative fluid pressure of air or water to adhere to nonporous surfaces, creating a partial vacuum.
Suction cups are peripheral traits of some animals such as octopuses ...
, which can be attached by suction to the human eye to study visual perceptions in the absence of eye movements, a laboratory condition called
retinal stabilization.
Books
A. L. Yarbus, ''Eye Movements and Vision''. New York: Plenum Press, 1967. (Translated from Russian by Basil Haigh. Original Russian edition published in Moscow in 1965.)
See also
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Sequence learning
In cognitive psychology, sequence learning is inherent to human ability because it is an integrated part of conscious and nonconscious learning as well as activities. Sequences of information or sequences of actions are used in various everyday tas ...
*
Psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
*
Psychophysics
Psychophysics quantitatively investigates the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations and perceptions they produce. Psychophysics has been described as "the scientific study of the relation between stimulus and sensation" or, m ...
*
Eye tracking
Eye tracking is the process of measuring either the point of gaze (where one is looking) or the motion of an eye relative to the head. An eye tracker is a device for measuring eye positions and eye movement. Eye trackers are used in research ...
*
Saccade
A saccade ( , French for ''jerk'') is a quick, simultaneous movement of both eyes between two or more phases of fixation in the same direction.Cassin, B. and Solomon, S. ''Dictionary of Eye Terminology''. Gainesville, Florida: Triad Publishi ...
References
External links
Strategic Networks(an application of Yarbus's scanpaths to improve learning in the classroom)
Yarbus revisited: task-dependent oculomotor behavior(a replication study)
Yarbus lives: a foveated exploration of how task influences saccadic eye movement(a replication study)
Soviet neuroscientists
1914 births
1986 deaths
Soviet psychologists
20th-century psychologists
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