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Eileen Kowler (1952-present) is a distinguished Cognitive Science professor at Rutgers University in New Brunswick and a part of the Rutgers Psychology Department. Kowler publishes approximately two articles each year on her research and in reference to all of the studies that she has accomplished thus far. Her major area of focus and primary field of study involves the demonstration of participatory smooth eye movements. This shows that the ocular motor system has the capacity to predict upcoming stimuli and generate responses ahead of time. The importance of smooth eye movements are their ability to operate and maintain incoming signals. Currently, Kowler is conducting a study in which is targetted to focus on the understanding of the processes,predictions and timing of eye movements during various tasks.

Early Life and Education
Kowler was born in Queens, New York in a 1950's household setting. She grew up in a harmonious middle class family. Her father and brother were both accountants. Her mother was a housewife. Kowler went to Forest Hill High School and was interested in various subjects such as; science, writing, reading, sports. She main field of focus was to pursue the topic of perception and cognition. While attending College she began to focus on concepts in Biology and had an interest in studies relating to human experience to the brain. Kowler received a Bachelors degree at Queens college in New York in 1952 for Psychology and received a Ph.D from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1978 for Psychology as well. Within the years of 1978-1980 she completed her NIH Postdoctoral from New York University.

Career
Eileen Kowler joined the Rutgers Psychology faculty in 1980 after she completed her postdoctoral work at New York University. She gained many titles while working at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. Kowler is also a member of the graduate faculty of Biomedical Engineering and is on the Executive Committee of the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science as well. Furthermore, Kowler served as the section editor for the Behavioral Physiology and Visuomotor Control of the journal Vision Research from 1995-2004 and is also on the editorial board for the Cognitive Brain Research Journal. Eileen Kowler's laboratory has been supported by grands from the Air Force Office of Science Research and NIH as well. In reflection of Eileen Kowler's profession at Rutgers University, Kowler believes her greatest reward is her interaction with students and having the opportunity to influence the next generation of students like us and to discover new things in her field. Within an interview which was conducted in the fall of 2012, Kowler stated, that one of the cons of her profession would be that the research and studies are time depriving. Kowler also generated some techniques and advice for students interested in the field of Psychological research she states,"You have to be very careful on how you educate yourself so that the education that was appropriate for one generation is not appropriate from the next. You have to really ask yourself particularly while you are still an undergraduate what you really want to learn. You need a very broad background in Science, Math, Philosophy, and literature if you want to succeed in this field".

Mentors and Influence
While attending graduate school at the University of Maryland, Kowler's adviser was Robert Martin Steinman. Robert Martin Steinman has a lot of experience in dentistry and other higher education and has experience in the field of optics and even wrote a book with Kowler on The Role of Small Saccades in Counting. He has also received many awards including the Elected fellow of American Association of Science, Elected fellow of American Psychological society and also the elected fellow of Optical Society of Americajust to name a few. Her post doctoral adviser was George Sperling whom studied with George A. Miller, one of the prominent Psychologists in the 20th century. Sperling's early research dealt with empirical studies of human processing and he runs the Human Information Processing Laboratory (HIPLab) at the University of California, Urvine (UCI). His fields of research also include visual memory systems, attention, visual perception, brain imaging (EEG, MEG, fMRI) and neural models of visual processes which includes many components like light adaptation and contrast detection for example. Kowler was not influenced by any of the prominent Psychologists of the 20th century like George A. Miller, but was influenced by a group of Psycho physicists who were working in the 1950's. The role of the 1950's Psycho physicist were to build equipment independently,discover new phenomena and built their own equipment and discovered new phenomena and did very careful and inspired experiments on visual perception.

Eye Movements and Attention:The role of pre-saccadic shifts of attention in perception, memory and the control of saccades
Kowler focused a majority of her research developing different theories behind the concept of eye movements and the overall structure of the human eye and it's specific features. The ability to see a full and complete version of your surroundings is largely impaired by saccadic eye movement and perceptual attention working together. It can be documented that saccadic accuracy and information facilitation across glances rely on pre-saccadic shifts of attention and that perceptual attention can work along with and without saccades. Shifting attention to a target does not require a saccade nor does fixing a target ensure that it will be attended. Kowler described the attention and saccades as a concept in which correlate. Attention is needed in order for saccades to be created, therefore attention is necessary for saccade function. However, Attention is not dependent upon saccades. Pre-saccadic shifts within an individual’s visual fields is an important feature in visual perception. Studies have shown that the control of saccades is dependent on pre-saccadic attention. Suppressing the cluttered objects and distractions within the environment and successfully targeting information gives the individual the advantage of avoiding saccadic landing errors. An example of a landing error in which can be found within an environment consisting of clutter is known as “center-of-gravity” saccade in which a saccade lands within the center of numerous targets and non-targets instead of landing within the specific target. These specific landing errors are caused by a concept called,spatial pooling Pre-saccadic shifts are known to have contributing factors to it’s development. The contributing factors in which are involved in the development for pre-saccadic shifts of attention are neural mechanisms. The specific neurons activate and function by specific neurons under saccadic control show an enhanced firing rate whenever the target falls into the receptive field of cells which display similar characteristics  to those observed by the individual’s  attention. When comparing the relationships between neurons and pre-saccadic shifts within attention, there are periods in which neurons increase firing when targets fall within the receptive field region within a cell. The (V1,V4) visual areas show an increase in pre-saccadic shifts as a factor of feature sensitivity. The saccadic movements and performances were analyzed by the duration and pauses which occurred when the targets of the study were present.

Methods
To test the pre-saccadic shifts in attention a study method was developed in which could identify the orientation of a target presented during the pause of two continuous saccades. There were two targets that were presented to the test subject within the experiment. The two targets presented were oriented in the shape of a letter T, they appeared briefly at multiple locations between each of the continuous pauses made by each of the saccades. The research subjects were given the task to identify the orientation of one of the T’s after each trial. The targets contrast would be altered every time a new trial was presented and would be displayed with other external noise when the research subjects were asked to continuously identify the target. The subject’s performance was then compared to their performances when they they identified the target at the saccadic goal locations as well as the 3 non-goal locations.When the experiment began observers fixated on the starting location where the target objects were to appear and then pressed a button in which would initiate the trial. Tones and signals were generated along the path. Subjects were asked to make saccades generate at an accelerated rate while remaining on the path. The eye position was monitored online in which would detect the first generated large saccade which would be projected towards the center of the display of the experiment. The chin of the participant was placed in a chin rest, following the covering of the left eye of the individual. The results were displayed online. The noise level of the tracker was measured with an artificial eye which was set and adjusted to the image reflection of the observer's eye. The target was presented with and without the presence of visual noise.

Results
Within this study, Kowler found that the role of the term, saccadic attention in following and selecting target items would be successfully broadcasted by time and strategy. The perceptual findings were best at the goal of the saccade. As the contrast within the experiment increased the saccadic performance of the individual decreased. Performances which took place at locations in which were non-goal locations, failed at reaching an upper asymptote when the highest level of the contrast tested. The individual 's performance were poor at the starting location of the experiment and locations which were opposite to the saccadic goals being tested.

Visual memory during pauses between successive saccades
In 2008 Eileen Kowler along with others from Rutgers University’s Department of psychology and cognitive sciences produced a study about eye movements and how they are closely related to selective attention. Fellow researchers included Timothy M. Gersch, Brian S. Schintzer and Barbara A. Dosher. They aimed to study saccades, which are defined as the fast movements of the eye or any part of the human or animal body. They noticed that when the saccaddic goal went at a certain rate at surrounding locations that attention moved. The saccadic patterns could remain ongoing without disrupting the “saccadic goal”. In order to test saccadic goals, Kowler along with her colleagues used color cued paths in order to evaluate attention by visual memory task, they also used random pauses between successive saccades since they believed it had an immense effect on memory. Kowler and her colleagues throughout the study began to understand how big of an impact that saccadic eye movement has on visual memory. By looking at targets that had color cued paths it resulted in the dissociation between attention and saccades. When it came to location, memory performance tasks were better than off path locations. Visual cues help assist in attention and memory. Another important reason of this study was to find out what exactly helps facilitate the distribution of attention during saccadic scanning. “The results point to two main processes that operated concurrently to govern the default distribution of attention during saccadic scanning: a ‘top–down’ shift of attention to each saccadic target in sequence and a spread of attention along the saccadic path to locations that shared critical features with the saccadic target." Performance on memory was poorer during scanning and better when saccadic movement was fixated. There is definitely more studies and experiments that can be done in order to learn more about this topic. Saccades are a key aspect in visual acuity, saccades help bring sight to the important areas of the eye such as the central fovea. Another importance that saccadic eye movement plays a role in is identifying and recognizing objects along with recollection. In order for this to occur one must attain direct attention to certain objects or areas that have significance to the task performance that’s being done. Saccadic eye movements also help when it comes to moving attention from one place to another. Kowler and her colleagues have been studying many developments in the saccadic approach when it comes to the relationship between attention and saccades. Their study focused on the manner in which attention helps saccades to connect with target areas when there are competing stimuli.

Methods
Kowler and the other researchers used three paid volunteers in the study. Eye movement recording was assessed by stabilizing the subjects head when they measured movements in the right eye.Before conducting the experiments they made sure that the subjects were normal and that they all had uncorrected vision. “Five of the circles were green and the rest red all with different luminance and vibrance rates. The display was bordered by 4 rectangular areas that each held three crosses which served as starting and ending locations for the saccadic sequence. The subjects fixated their vision on a green colored cross and pressed a button in order to begin the trial. Once the trial began the subject would hear a beep sound in which was the signal in which sequences of saccades begin. There were 8 different saccadic paths being tested. In order to remove sequence order an on-line algorithm was used to observe eye movement and help randomize the appearance during pauses of saccades. When this step was finished along with the first trial “the location of the letter was stipulated on a post-trial display by changing color of the circle in the probed location. The perceptual performance was tested while steady fixation was maintained at one of the 3 central on-path locations chosen randomly, saccades were made using the identical stimuli without a letter report taken at the end of the trial.” Visual memory was also tested. The subject was evaluated by their ability to recognize a display of 25 letters that were randomly chosen and unsystematically flashed during inter-saccadic pauses. The 25 letters were randomly chosen from a set of 10 (A to N). When the subject was identifying the observed letter the location was randomly chosen from the central set of 9 letters, this was extremely important to eliminate testing at the edges of the display. After this, the next step was to begin analyzing saccadic characteristics. The characteristics involved distances between fixated positions known as “offset error” and the center of the fixated circle known as “good saccades."

Result
For saccadic sequences the results were presented accurately and they followed the given path. The on-path saccades landed almost accurately on average. Kowler used this saccadic performance to compare to controlled sessions that were observed previously and found that the same sequential patterns of saccades were completed without present memory test. Another discovery was the differences in offset errors and with no simultaneous task. The results on visual memory performance are as follows. The importance of this path result shows that color differences had learned significance and helped influence which letters were to be most likely encoded in memory. Interestingly during intersaccadic pauses fewer letters were remembered as opposed to maintained fixation. Also when letters were shown on a saccadic path they could be remembers even along with locations that were examined prior and off-path performances showed that subjects hardly remembered. Kowler and her colleagues found that at saccadic targets memory was more accurate at other locations. These findings indicate that the distributions of attention throughout intersaccadic pauses (short delay between eye movements) are due to the product of grouping. This proves that the human visual system has controlled mechanisms that don’t interfere with attention with ongoing saccadic programming

Publications

 * Burr, D., Kowler, E.Reeves, A. and Verghese, P (2004) Visual attention. Special issue of Vision Research, Volume 44, May.
 * Kowler, E., Erkelens, C.J. and Sperkreijse, H. (2001) Eye Movements and Vision in the Natural World. Special issue of Vision Research, Volume 41 (Nov-Dec).
 * Kowler, E. (1990). (Ed.) Eye Movements and their Role in Visual and Cognitive Process. Volume 4 in Reviews of Oculomotor Research, Elsevier Science Publishers, Amsterdam.
 * Papathomas, T., Chubb, C., Gorea, A. and Kowler, E. (1965)(Eds.) Early Vision and Beyond. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Institutions
• Queens college

• University of Maryland

• New York University

Rutgers Affiliations

 * Center for Cognitive Science
 * Graduate Faculty of Biomedical Engineering
 * Department of Psychology

Honors and Awards
Davida Teller Award, Rutgers University in 2013