An adaptive model of gaze-based selection

Gaze-based selection has received significant academic attention over a number of years. While advances have been made, it is possible that further progress could be made if there were a deeper understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that guide eye movement and vision. Control of eye movement typically results in a sequence of movements (saccades) and fixations followed by a ‘dwell’ at a target and a selection. To shed light on how these sequences are planned, this paper presents a computational model of the control of eye movements in gaze-based selection. We formulate the model as a sequential planning problem bounded by the limits of the human visual and motor systems and use reinforcement learning to approximate optimal solutions. The model accurately replicates earlier results on the effects of target size and distance and captures a number of other aspects of performance. The model can be used to predict number of fixations and duration required to make a gaze-based selection. The future development of the model is discussed.