In order to perceive the world around us in high resolution, we need to move our eyes. When we do that, the world seems stable. This is actually quite strange, considering that the image on the retina changes every time we move our eyes. This problem has been giving headaches to scientists for centuries and is called ‘the problem of visual stability’. This video is an illustration of how the image on the retina (right side) changes when a person is viewing a scene of a port of Alicante (left side).
What can eye movements tell us about how we perceive the world? What can eye movements tell us about information processing? These questions have already been answered in this historical educational video produced by Institute of Psychology Russian Academy of Science and Department of Psychology of Moscow State University in 1972. Surprisingly, even in this day and age this video is still a nice introduction into eye-tracking and what can be done with it. You also get a nice demonstration of the methods of eye movement registration used in the past.