Attention to repeated images on the World-Wide Web: another look at scanpath theory.

The scanpath theory of visual perception was tested using Web pages as visual stimuli. Scanpaths are repetitive sequences of fixations and saccades that occur upon reexposure to a visual stimulus. Since Internet users are exposed to repeated visual displays, the Web provides ideal stimuli to test this theory. Eye movement data were recorded for subjects' repeated viewings of three Web pages over three sessions. Resemblance of eye path sequences was measured with a string-edit method; multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used to group sequences. Support was found for the scanpath theory; some clusters included pairs of sequences from the same subject. A repeated measures analysis of variance revealed a statistically significant main effect for stimulus type, with a text-intensive news story page generating more similar sequences than a graphic-intensive advertising page. There was a statistically significant main effect for cross-viewing comparisons, reflecting a linear trend in which eye paths for the same subject became more alike over time.