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Processes of Visuospatial Attention and Working Memory pp 393–418Cite as

Eye Movements in Neuropsychological Tasks

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Part of the book series: Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences ((CTBN,volume 41))

Abstract

This chapter reviews how recording and analysis of eye movements have been applied to understanding cognitive functioning in patients with neurological disease. Measures derived from the performance of instructed eye movement tests such as the anti-saccade and memory-guided saccade tasks have been shown to be associated with cognitive test performance and the early stages of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Other researchers have taken an ecological approach and recorded the uninstructed pattern of saccades made by patients during performance of established neuropsychological tasks. Studies that have analysed the eye movement strategies used in a number of widely used tests are reviewed, including the Corsi blocks, Tower of London, ‘CANTAB’ Spatial Working Memory and Brixton Spatial Anticipation test. The findings illustrate that eye movements are not purely in the service of vision, but support visuospatial working memory and forward action planning. Eye movement tests and measures also have potential for application in the assessment and diagnosis of neurological disease and cognitive impairment. Establishing large-scale normative data sets in healthy older adults and use of machine learning multivariate classifier algorithms may be key to further developing eye tracking applications in neuropsychological assessment.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    CANTAB® [Cognitive assessment software]. Cambridge Cognition (2017). All rights reserved. www.cantab.com.

  2. 2.

    Videos showing eye movements in many of the tasks described in this chapter can be viewed online at https://www.youtube.com/user/HodgsonTim/playlists.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Timothy L. Hodgson & Frouke Hermens

  2. Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, Lincoln, UK

    Gemma Ezard

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  1. Timothy L. Hodgson
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Correspondence to Timothy L. Hodgson .

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  1. School of Psychology, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Timothy Hodgson

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Hodgson, T.L., Ezard, G., Hermens, F. (2019). Eye Movements in Neuropsychological Tasks. In: Hodgson, T. (eds) Processes of Visuospatial Attention and Working Memory. Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences, vol 41. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/7854_2019_98

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