Eye and Head Response to an Attention Cue in a Dual Task Paradigm

Eight subjects were used to characterize eye and head movements in response to a cue to refixate. The subjects' tasks were to complete a centrally located task and identify vertically peripheral targets. Eye and head reaction time as well as conventional performance measures were recorded. The results showed that the eye and head movement pattern obtained with vertically displaced targets was not identical with those previously obtained with horizontally displaced targets. The results also indicated that eye reaction time, with hard tracking, increases the farther a target is vertically displaced from the centrally located task and head reaction time decreases with the presence of a verbal cue prior to target presentation. Manual reaction time did not, however, decrease with a cue. These results suggest that such unobtrusive measures may be valuable in the design of attention cueing systems.