ArticleBehavior research methods2025
The best fixation target revisited: New insights from retinal eye tracking.
Article in Behavior research methods, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Repeatability of Foveal Sensitivity Measured Using Adaptive Optics Microperimetry.Translational vision science & technology · 2026Article
- The fundamentals of eye tracking, Part 7: Determining data quality.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Label-free in vivo molecular profiling of the human retina by non-resonant Raman spectroscopy.Communications biology · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
In many tasks, participants are instructed to fixate a target. While maintaining fixation, the eyes nonetheless make small fixational eye movements, such as microsaccades and drift. Previous work has examined the effect of fixation point design on fixation stability and the amount and spatial extent of fixational eye movements. However, much of this work used video-based eye trackers, which have insufficient resolution and suffer from artefacts that make them unsuitable for this topic of study. Here, we therefore use a retinal eye tracker, which offers superior resolution and does not suffer from the same artifacts to reexamine what fixation point design minimizes fixational eye movements. Participants were shown five fixation targets in two target polarity conditions, while the overall spatial spread of their gaze position during fixation, as well as their microsaccades and fixational drift, were examined. We found that gaze was more stable for white-on-black than black-on-grey fixation targets. Gaze was also more stable (lower spatial spread, microsaccade, and drift displacement) for fixation targets with a small central feature but these targets also yielded higher microsaccade rates than larger fixation targets without such a small central feature. In conclusion, there is not a single best fixation target that minimizes all aspects of fixational eye movements. Instead, if one wishes to optimize for minimal spatial spread of the gaze position, microsaccade or drift displacements, we recommend using a target with a small central feature. If one instead wishes to optimize for the lowest microsaccade rate, we recommend using a larger target without a small central feature.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.