A large dataset that contains the eye movements of N=216 programmers of different experience levels captured during two code comprehension tasks is presented. Data are grouped in terms of programming expertise (from none to high) and other demographic descriptors. Data were collected through an international collaborative effort that involved eleven research teams across eight countries on four continents. The same eye tracking apparatus and software was used for the data collection. The Eye Movements in Programming (EMIP) dataset is freely available for download. The varied metadata in the EMIP dataset provides fertile ground for the analysis of gaze behavior and may be used to make novel insights about code comprehension.

The ability to automatically detect visually interesting regions in images has many practical applications, especially in the design of active machine vision and automatic visual surveillance systems. Analysis of the statistics of image features at observers' gaze can provide insights into the mechanisms of fixation selection in humans. Using a foveated analysis framework, we studied the statistics of four low-level local image features: luminance, contrast, and bandpass outputs of both luminance and contrast, and discovered that image patches around human fixations had, on average, higher values of each of these features than image patches selected at random. Contrast-bandpass showed the greatest difference between human and random fixations, followed by luminance-bandpass, RMS contrast, and luminance. Using these measurements, we present a new algorithm that selects image regions as likely candidates for fixation. These regions are shown to correlate well with fixations recorded from human observers.

The ability to automatically detect visually interesting regions in images has practical applications in the design of active machine vision systems. Analysis of the statistics of image features at observers gaze can provide insights into the mechanisms of fixation selection in humans. Using a novel foveated analysis framework, in which features were analyzed at the spatial resolution at which they were perceived, we studied the statistics of four low-level local image features: luminance, contrast, center-surround outputs of luminance and contrast, and discovered that the image patches around human fixations had, on average, higher values of each of these features than the image patches selected at random. Center-surround contrast showed the greatest difference between human and random fixations, followed by contrast, center-surround luminance, and luminance. Using these measurements, we present a new algorithm that selects image regions as likely candidates for fixation. These regions are shown to correlate well with fixations recorded from observers.