A lot of the preliminary research in this area came from the Sesame Street program:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_Street_research

I don't have a specific citation for you, but that might be one place to look.

Also, I know there is work that has been done on reflex orientation towards movement that focused on TV: if movement is too frequent we tune it out, too infrequent and we lose interest. But if the rate of change is right, we find it hard not to look because we reflexively look to motion to assess it for threat potential. I don't recall the name of the reflex, but if you find that, it might help.

Thanks Arle, I'll have a look there, it sounds like it fits the bill. Hope all is well! 

Peripheral movement attracts involuntary attention, in experiments reported in Remington, Johnson, Yantis (1992) Involuntary attentional capture by abrupt onsets. Perception & Psychophysics, 51(3):279-290.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03212254

This is now a subject of fMRI studies, e.g. Lechak & Leber (2011) Moment-to-moment fluctuations in attentional distraction by motion: an fMRI analysis. Journal of Vision, 11(11): article 95

Hi Stephen,

As a visual artist I work intuitively with my sense of vision and have developed a new form of illusionary space termed Vision-Space. This system models visual awareness. In developing the system we incorporated aspects of computational visual science. 

Vision-Space indicates that so called peripheral vision has nothing to do with degraded central vision! It forms a field structure (x,y,z) around a selected fixation object that generates 'proximity cues'. Nothing to do with depth-of-field or information structure 'blur'. The field forming primary sense of spatial orientation in the world and obviously movements with respect to the locus of the field. This field has its own form of holistic awareness - we address the entirety of the field to 'sift' for movement that's then promoted to conscious awareness. 

Here are 3 presentations and there is another to follow in this series later this week. I also attach the full list of Vision-Space presentations. 

Vision-Space: Self-reference Pt 1, within spatial texture http://youtu.be/xUGOD1g3dtI Vision-Space: Self-reference Pt 2, contributions from memory http://youtu.be/hDDoRGHaOwE

Vision-Space: Self-reference Pt 3, exploring the extents of phenomenal field http://youtu.be/SarFf6FA8Eg

All questions most welcome. There are some articles on my page. 

I am current;y working with Frank Langbein of Cardiff Uni (computer science dept) to get Vision-Space to real-time speeds for use in simulators so we can obtain the evaluation data etc.

Best - John

You might like to look at this latest PAC presentation. It's a bit long but it kind of tracks through OK.

Vision-Space: Self Reference Pt 4, painting phenomenal field, accessing the umwelt? http://youtu.be/g8rOhQhcl0A

Movement is a highly salient visual transient that can capture attention (and thus the eyes), but it's ability to do so is modulated by many things including processing demand at the point of fixation (e.g. Lavie, 1995) and top-down strategies that prioritise certain areas of the visual scene (e.g. scene priors; Torrabla et al., 2006).

Thanks all, these have all proven to be excellent suggestions for the project.