Gaze behaviour during space perception and spatial decision making

Abstract

A series of four experiments investigating gaze behavior and decision making in the context of wayfinding is reported. Participants were presented with screen-shots of choice points taken in large virtual environments. Each screen-shot depicted alternative path options. In Experiment 1, participants had to decide between them in order to find an object hidden in the environment. In Experiment 2, participants were first informed about which path option to take as if following a guided route. Subsequently they were presented with the same images in random order and had to indicate which path option they chose during initial exposure. In Experiment 1, we demonstrate (1) that participants have a tendency to choose the path option that featured the longer line of sight, and (2) a robust gaze bias towards the eventually chosen path option. In Experiment 2, systematic differences in gaze behavior towards the alternative path options between encoding and decoding were observed. Based on data from Experiments 1 & 2 and two control experiments ensuring that fixation patterns were specific to the spatial tasks, we develop a tentative model of gaze behavior during wayfinding decision making suggesting that particular attention was paid to image areas depicting changes in the local geometry of the environments such as corners, openings, and occlusions. Together, the results suggest that gaze during a wayfinding tasks is directed toward, and can be predicted by, a subset of environmental features and that gaze bias effects are a general phenomenon of visual decision making.

User studies in cartography: opportunities for empirical research on interactive maps and visualizations

“…Regarding the former, there is a growing body of cartographic research reported in the psychology literature on spatial concepts (e.g. Liben & Downs, 1993;Wiener, Hölscher, Büchner, & Konieczny, 2012) and spatial abilities (e.g. Hegarty, Montello, Richardson, Ishikawa, & Lovelace, 2006;Miyake, Friedman, Rettinger, Shah, & Hegarty, 2001).…”

Eye tracking for locomotion prediction in redirected walking

“…It was shown in consumer and cognitive science research that a person's gaze can be highly predictive of future actions in selection tasks. Various researchers found that if people are asked to make a decision between a number of options, there is a significant gaze bias towards the chosen option for a short time period before the decision is announced [3,17,25,26]. It is also known that the gaze direction leads the walking direction by a few seconds [6] and the same holds true for driving [8,12].…”

Gaze behavior during incidental and intentional navigation in an outdoor environment

“…There is ample evidence that the processing of spatial information such as landmarks is dependent on and affected by gaze behavior (e.g., Wiener, De Condappa, & Hölscher, 2011;Wiener, Hölscher, Büchner, & Konieczny, 2012).…”