Abstract
Objective: This study aims to present literature providing researchers with insights on specific fields of research and highlighting the major issues in the research topics. A systematic review is suggested using content analysis on literatures regarding "visual search", "eye movement", and "eye track". Background: Literature review can be classified as "narrative" or "systematic" depending on its approach in structuring the content of the research. Narrative review is a traditional approach that describes the current state of a study field and discusses relevant topics. However, since literatures on specific area cover a broad range, reviewers inherently give subjective weight on specific issues. On the contrary, systematic review applies explicit structured methodology to observe the study trends quantitatively. Method: We collected meta-data of journal papers using three search keywords: visual search, eye movement, and eye track. The collected information contains an unstructured data set including many natural languages which compose titles and abstracts, while the keyword of the journal paper is the only structured one. Based on the collected terms, seven categories were evaluated by inductive categorization and quantitative analysis from the chronological trend of the research area. Results: Unstructured information contains heavier content on "stimuli" and "condition" categories as compared with structured information. Studies on visual search cover a wide range of cognitive area whereas studies on eye movement and eye track are closely related to the physiological aspect. In addition, experimental studies show an increasing trend as opposed to the theoretical studies. Conclusion: By systematic review, we could quantitatively identify the characteristic of the research keyword which presented specific research topics. We also found out that the structured information was more suitable to observe the aim of the research. Chronological analysis on the structured keyword data showed that studies on "physical eye movement" and "cognitive process" were jointly studied in increasing fashion. Application: While conventional narrative literature reviews were largely dependent on authors' instinct, quantitative approach enabled more objective and macroscopic views. Moreover, the characteristics of information type were specified by comparing unstructured and structured information. Systematic literature review also could be used to support the authors' instinct in narrative literature reviews.