Abstract
What changes in eye gaze behavior are a result of visual expertise with a stimulus class? To address this question, eye gaze was tracked while expert fingerprint examiners and novices performed a fingerprint matching task. The display was configured such that there was one fingerprint in noise and one clear fingerprint placed side-by-side. Data were analyzed in two ways. 1.) Statistics such as saccade length and fixation duration were computed in order to determine the low-level changes, if any, that occur as a result of expertise. 2.) Computational methods such as spatial density analysis and Hidden Markov Modeling were employed to reveal the spatial and temporal effects of expertise. Using this combination of simple and complex analyses, we are able to draw conclusions about how expertise manifests itself through eye gaze behavior as well as the functional level which these effects take place.