Preliminary study on systematic literature review of vision research

Abstract

This study introduces systematic review of literatures on human vision. Both content analysis and network analysis are used to quantitatively analyze recent trends in human vision research. Three terms, 'visual search', 'eye movement' and 'eye track', were selected as the central keywords characterizing the research field. Seven sub-categories of research keywords were selected and analyzed in content analysis method. Chronological application on content analysis showed a distinct trend that the publications of 'experimental studies' on human vision have continuously increased comparing to the 'theoretical studies'. Network analysis showed unique structural characteristics on three search keywords, showing the keyword 'eye movements' play a critical role in connecting various areas of vision research. Using the results of the study, it was possible to point out; (1) the structural characteristics of a potential research topic and (2) the relationship between the research topic and keyword networks generated from this study. © 2013 IEEE.