Peripheral vision in real-world tasks: A systematic review

Abstract

Peripheral vision is fundamental for many real-world tasks, including walking, driving, and aviation. Nonetheless, there has been no effort to connect these applied literatures to research in peripheral vision in basic vision science or sports science. To close this gap, we analyzed 60 relevant papers, chosen according to objective criteria. Applied research, with its real-world time constraints, complex stimuli, and performance measures, reveals new functions of peripheral vision. Peripheral vision is used to monitor the environment (e.g., road edges, traffic signs, or malfunctioning lights), in ways that differ from basic research. Applied research uncovers new actions that one can perform solely with peripheral vision (e.g., steering a car, climbing stairs). An important use of peripheral vision is that it helps compare the position of one’s body/vehicle to objects in the world. In addition, many real-world tasks require multitasking, and the fact that peripheral vision provides degraded but useful information means that tradeoffs are common in deciding whether to use peripheral vision or move one’s eyes. These tradeoffs are strongly influenced by factors like expertise, age, distraction, emotional state, task importance, and what the observer already knows. These tradeoffs make it hard to infer from eye movements alone what information is gathered from peripheral vision and what tasks we can do without it. Finally, we recommend three ways in which basic, sport, and applied science can benefit each other’s methodology, furthering our understanding of peripheral vision more generally.

On investigating drivers’ attention allocation during partially-automated driving

“…Building on the experimental work by Minamoto et al ( 2015 ) and Sorqvist et al ( 2016 ) wherein the distraction potential of task-irrelevant visual stimuli was powered under lower load, it is then plausible that the decline in workload experienced during partially-automated driving may have increased the distraction potential of roadside billboards. This intepretation would also be consistent with the literature on cognitive tunnelling whereby a reduction in the drivers’ useful field of view is observed under greater cognitive load (Strayer et al, 2011 ; Vater et al, 2022 ). For example, Reimer ( 2009 ) had participants complete a driving task alongside a secondary cognitive task.…”

In-Vehicle Interaction Systems, Eye Movements, and Safety

“…‘Looked but did not see errors’ are among the most frequent causes of accidents (Brown, 2002). Vater et al (2022) also reported, distraction inherently reduces a driver’s awareness of the driving environment, as it puts driving-relevant information outside the visual field. Other researchers also reported that, while distracted drivers rely more on peripheral vision for lane-keeping, they are less able to process and react to the information that peripheral vision provides them (Gaspar et al, 2016; Lin & Hsu, 2010).…”

“…'Looked but did not see errors' are among the most frequent causes of accidents (Brown, 2002). Vater et al (2022) also reported, distraction inherently reduces a driver's awareness of the driving environment, as it puts driving-relevant information outside the visual field.…”

The effect of visual sensory interference during multitask obstacle crossing in younger and older adults

“…The longer RT with high sensory interference may indicate that the participants were switching attention between the obstacle in the walkway and the light cue when it was away from the obstacle. Alternatively, increased RT may indicate that participants adopted a gaze strategy observed in sports, called gaze anchor : foveating on one area of interest (e.g., obstacle) and relying on peripheral vision to monitor another area (e.g., light cue location in upper visual field) [ 47 ]. Since RT is longer when the stimulus is in the peripheral versus central visual field [ 48 , 49 ], increased RT may have resulted from monitoring the light cue location with peripheral vision.…”