Since the discovery of saccadic express reactions there is an increasing interest in very fast oculomotor reactions and fixations. Using the electrooculogram and computer defined saccades we had collected a large corpus of looking behaviour in several tasks on N = 521 subjects from 4 to 90 years old, including picture inspection, unstructured interview with open and closed eyes, tracking a sinusoidal and rectangular moving point, and solving the RAVEN matrices. We reanalysed these data for the regularities of very fast fixations and express fixations, defined as time windows between 40 to 90 ms for very fast fixations (no visual correction) and 90 to 150 ms for express fixations (fast visual correction possible), and the relationship to two categories of longer fixation durations, between 150 and 900 ms (cognitive modulation), and very long fixation duration, 900 - 3000 ms. We found in the adult from 20 to 90 years an increasing percentage of very fast fixations during LOOKING AT PICTURES (5.4 to 6.9% of all fixations) as well as during the RAVEN task (4.1 to 6.6%), but a decrease in express fixations (10.2 to 7.2% during PICTURE and 13.1 to 9.9% during RAVEN over the years), while the very long fixations increase (from 10.5 to 16.6% during PICTURE and 9.2 to 11.7% during RAVEN; all changes are highly significant). During childhood (i.e. from 4 to 13 years) the trends in express fixations are increasing while in very long fixations decreasing.

Conclusions: separating distinctive categories of fixation durations outside the mostly used cognitive range is justified, while the borderlines need to be proofed. Cognitive theory of fixation duration needs a completion by inhibitory processes for example of a spontaneous high frequency saccade generator.