A Content Analysis of the Trends in Vision Research With Focus on Visual Search, Eye Movement, and Eye Track

Abstract

Objective: This study aims to present literature providing researchers with insightson specific fields of research and highlighting the major issues in the researchtopics. A systematic review is suggested using content analysis on literatures regarding"visual search", "eye movement", and "eye track". Background: Literature review can be classified as "narrative" or "systematic"depending on its approach in structuring the content of the research. Narrativereview is a traditional approach that describes the current state of a study fieldand discusses relevant topics. However, since literatures on specific area cover abroad range, reviewers inherently give subjective weight on specific issues. On thecontrary, systematic review applies explicit structured methodology to observe thestudy trends quantitatively. Method: We collected meta-data of journal papers using three search keywords:visual search, eye movement, and eye track. The collected information contains anunstructured data set including many natural languages which compose titles andabstracts, while the keyword of the journal paper is the only structured one. Basedon the collected terms, seven categories were evaluated by inductive categorizationand quantitative analysis from the chronological trend of the research area. Results: Unstructured information contains heavier content on "stimuli" and"condition" categories as compared with structured information. Studies on visualsearch cover a wide range of cognitive area whereas studies on eye movement andeye track are closely related to the physiological aspect. In addition, experimentalstudies show an increasing trend as opposed to the theoretical studies. Conclusion: By systematic review, we could quantitatively identify the characteristicof the research keyword which presented specific research topics. We also foundout that the structured information was more suitable to observe the aim of theresearch. Chronological analysis on the structured keyword data showed that studieson "physical eye movement" and "cognitive process" were jointly studied in increasingfashion. Application: While conventional narrative literature reviews were largely dependenton authors' instinct, quantitative approach enabled more objective and macroscopicviews. Moreover, the characteristics of information type were specified by comparingunstructured and structured information. Systematic literature review also could beused to support the authors' instinct in narrative literature reviews.