Eye Movements in Connexion with Television Viewing

Abstract

THE present-day British system of television makes use of the line interlace system whereby frames, each containing only half the total picture information, are presented at the rate of 50 per sec. The advantage of this system compared with the sequential system, in which each frame contains the total picture information, is that it gives a subjective increase in the maximum amount of information that can be transmitted in a given band-width. A disadvantage of the interlace system is that pictures of still objects may show instability associated with the interlace, and those of vertically moving objects may appear non-interlaced with the raster drifting slowly in the direction of movement (that is, ‘crawling’). Gouriet¹ has suggested that differences in the pattern of eye movement when viewing sequential and interlaced pictures could account for these phenomena.