Previous research has shown that artists employ flexible attentional strategies during offline perceptual tasks. The current study explored visual processing online, by tracking the eye movements of artists and non-artists (n=65) while they produced representational drawings of photographic stimuli. The findings revealed that it is possible to differentiate artists from non-artists on the basis of the relative amount of global-to-local saccadic eye movements they make when looking at the target stimulus while drawing, but not in a preparatory free viewing phase. Results indicated that these differences in eye movements are not specifically related to representational drawing ability, and may be a feature of artistic ability more broadly. This eye movement analysis technique may be used in future research to characterise the dynamics of attentional shifts in eye movements while artists are carrying out a range of artistic tasks.

先前的研究表明，艺术家在离线感知任务中会采用灵活的注意力策略。当前的研究通过跟踪艺术家和非艺术家（n = 65）在制作摄影刺激的代表性绘画时的眼睛运动来在线探索视觉处理。研究结果表明，有可能根据绘画时看着目标刺激时他们进行的全局到局部眼跳运动的相对数量来区分艺术家与非艺术家，但不能处于准备自由观看阶段。结果表明，眼动的这些差异与代表性的绘画能力并没有特别的关系，可能更广泛地是艺术能力的特征。