Abstract: More than one third of the human brain is devoted to the processes of seeing — vision is after all the main way in which we gather information about the world. But human vision is a dynamic process during which the eyes continually sample the environment. Where most books on vision consider it as a passive activity, this book focuses on vision as an ‘active’ process. It goes beyond most accounts of vision where the focus is on seeing, to provide an account of seeing AND looking. The book starts by pointing out the weaknesses in our traditional approaches to vision and the reason we need this new approach. It then gives a thorough description of basic details of the visual and oculomotor systems necessary to understand active vision. The book goes on to show how this approach can give a new perspective on visual attention, and how the approach has progressed in the areas of visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception, and neuropsychology. Finally, the book summarizes progress by showing how this approach sheds new light on the old problem of how we maintain perception of a stable visual world.

Keywords: seeing, passive vision, looking, oculomotor systems, visual orienting, reading, visual search, scene perception, neuropsychology