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The visual span of chess players

Published: 26 March 2008 Publication History

Abstract

As part of an effort to provide a framework for the advancement and development of chess skills in young children and beginners an experiment was undertaken to determine how the visual scanning of a chess board differs between weaker and better players. The ELO rating system was used as an independent variable in a series of chess problems that were presented to chess players on a Tobii eye-tracker system.
It was found that stronger players perceive more squares with a single fixation and that they spend less time to inspect each square than weaker players. Also, the number of squares that are revisited is, at least for easier problems, significantly lower for players of higher strength. It appears that gaze patterns differ for more challenging problems.

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  • (2015)Methods and Applications of Eye TrackingThe Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research10.1017/CBO9780511973017.009(60-78)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2015

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    ETRA '08: Proceedings of the 2008 symposium on Eye tracking research & applications
    March 2008
    285 pages
    ISBN:9781595939821
    DOI:10.1145/1344471
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    Published: 26 March 2008

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    1. chess
    2. eye-tracking
    3. visual span

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    ETRA '08: Eye Tracking Research and Applications
    March 26 - 28, 2008
    Georgia, Savannah

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    • (2015)Methods and Applications of Eye TrackingThe Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research10.1017/CBO9780511973017.009(60-78)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2015

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