Anticipatory Eye Movements in Congkak

Congkak is a traditional Malaysian board game involving two players taking turns to pick up marbles from a series of holes on the board. We used this game as a model to explore the role of anticipatory eye movements during natural actions (in this case serially picking up/putting marbles) as novices learnt the game. Prior work on eye and hand movements in natural behaviour shows that much of the demand on the visual system is computed at the moment it is needed and doesn't depend on information acquired from previous fixations. Vision is driven by the task demands. However, anticipatory fixations to upcoming targets of manipulation have recently been shown to confer spatial accuracy and influence the eye-hand latency. We find that experience with the game also influences the deployment of these anticipatory “look-ahead” fixations, and that their influence on eye-hand latency varies with experience. Results suggest that as our experience in Congkak grows, so does our knowledge of the space relationships necessary for task success.