Visual symmetry perception and symmetry preference have been studied extensively. However, less is known about how people spontaneously scan symmetrical stimuli with their eyes. We thus examined spontaneous saccadic eye movements when participants (N = 20) observed patterns with horizontal or vertical mirror reflection. We found that participants tend to make saccades along the axis of reflection and that this oculomotor behaviour was similar during objective classification and subjective evaluation tasks. The axis-scanning behaviour generates a dynamic sequence of novel symmetrical images from a single static stimulus. This could aid symmetry perception and evaluation by enhancing the neural response to symmetry.

视觉对称感知和对称偏好已被广泛研究。然而，人们如何自发地用眼睛扫描对称刺激却知之甚少。因此，当参与者（N  = 20）观察到水平或垂直镜面反射的图案时，我们检查了自发的眼跳运动。我们发现，参与者倾向于沿着反射轴扫视，并且在客观分类和主观评估任务过程中这种动眼行为是相似的。轴扫描行为从单个静态刺激中生成了动态的新颖对称图像序列。通过增强对对称的神经反应，这可以帮助对称感知和评估。