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Problem solving? Active vision actively helps. January 15, 2008

Steve Higgins over at Omni-Brain takes a recent paper by Thomas and Lleras as the subject of a great post. According to Higgins’ review, the study showed that subjects solved a problem much more quickly when directed to make one pattern of eye movements over others.

The comments thread is shaping up to be interesting too – is the effect due to embodied cognition (the eyes “acting out” the movements that the correct solution consists of) or is it to do with inter-hemispheric communication?

Definitely worth a look for Higgins’ great summary. The full paper is available here – no Athens password required.