When, where, and for how long: What drives gaze behavior during goal-directed motor action?

Vision typically plays a vital role in our ability to navigate through a cluttered world, negotiate varying terrain, and interact with objects and other individuals. Our understanding of what determines how people decide where, when, and for how long to direct gaze to guide their motor behaviors continues to evolve. This narrative review first summarizes the behavioral evidence for a core assumption about these decisions: gaze behavior serves to reduce task-relevant uncertainty of environmental features and the decision landscape. Next, it expands on this simplistic viewpoint by capitalizing on separate lines of research to demonstrate how different cognitive, motor, and visual factors bias this information-seeking gaze behavior. The focus here is on gaze during goal-directed limb movements including walking or using the upper extremities to interact with objects. Finally, it advocates for considering inter-individual differences in how the cognitive, motor, and visual factors are integrated in the decision-making process. An appreciation of the factors, and their interactions with one another, may inspire new research and provide new insight into decision-making more broadly.