Color vision deficiencies are quite frequent in men. However, effects on eye movement behavior have rarely been studied.

We investigated eye movements during visual exploration of high-quality digital reproductions of still-life paintings in normal and color deficient participants. We presented observers with images of the original colored paintings, and with grayscale versions of these images. So far, 37 participants with normal color vision and 24 participants with color deficiencies were tested. We analyzed basic oculomotor measures such as numbers and amplitudes of saccades, positions and durations of fixations and the extents of explored image areas (spread). We also explored scan paths, fixation heatmaps and the chromatic properties of the fixated regions.

We found remarkable little difference in the fixation patterns of dichromatic and color-normal observers, which is probably due to the clear delineation of objects in the paintings. This held for the spatial distribution of fixations, but also for the color distributions of the fixated regions. But we did find that fixation durations of color deficient observers were prolonged on average by 15 ms. Remarkably, the increase of fixation durations in the color deficient observers was also seen with the grayscale images. It was particularly pronounced for the first fixation.

Color deficient observers may have learned a different fixation strategy to improve information uptake and processing. While previous descriptions of the perception of color deficient observers were often concerned with very specific differences, our results indicate a relatively general effect.