Probing the temporal dynamics of the exploration–exploitation dilemma of eye movements

Ehinger, Benedikt V.; Kaufhold, Lilli; König, Peter

doi:10.1167/18.3.6

Cited by 19 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 130 publications

(149 reference statements)

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“…The 60 Hz refresh rate of the monitor may result in a small delay of screen refresh (∼17 ms). We use such a gaze contingent setup routinely and tested it thoroughly ( Ehinger et al, 2018 ). Further, in the present study the region of interest, i.e., the Model Area, was large and distant from the other areas, which makes detection of relevant fixations particularly fast and easy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The World as an External Memory: The Price of Saccades in a Sensorimotor Task

Melnik

Schüler

Rothkopf

et al. 2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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Theories of embodied cognition postulate that the world can serve as an external memory. This implies that instead of storing visual information in working memory the information may be equally retrieved by appropriate eye movements. Given this assumption, the question arises, how we balance the effort of memorization with the effort of visual sampling our environment. We analyzed eye-tracking data in a sensorimotor task where participants had to produce a copy of a LEGO®-blocks-model displayed on a computer screen. In the unconstrained condition, the model appeared immediately after eye-fixation on the model. In the constrained condition, we introduced a 0.7 s delay before uncovering the model. The model disappeared as soon as participants made a saccade outside of the Model Area. To successfully copy a model of 8 blocks participants made saccades to the Model Area on average 7.9 times in the unconstrained condition and 5.2 times in the constrained condition. However, the mean duration of a trial was 2.9 s (14%) longer in the constrained condition even when taking into account the delayed visibility of the model. In this study, we found evidence for an adaptive shift in subjects’ behavior toward memorization by introducing a price for a certain type of saccades. However, the response is not adaptive; it is maladaptive, as memorization leads to longer overall performance time.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The World as an External Memory: The Price of Saccades in a Sensorimotor Task

Melnik

Schüler

Rothkopf

et al. 2018

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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“…Fast sampling rates are important to shorten online delay for gaze-dependent experiments (e.g. Ehinger, Kaufhold & König, 2018) and increase accuracy of event onsets for example, EEG/ET co-registered experiments (Dimigen et al, 2011; Ehinger, König & Ossandón, 2015). In this paragraph we analyse the reported and effective sampling rates of both eye-trackers.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new comprehensive eye-tracking test battery concurrently evaluating the Pupil Labs glasses and the EyeLink 1000

Ehinger

Groß

Ibs

et al. 2019

PeerJ

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Eye-tracking experiments rely heavily on good data quality of eye-trackers. Unfortunately, it is often the case that only the spatial accuracy and precision values are available from the manufacturers. These two values alone are not sufficient to serve as a benchmark for an eye-tracker: Eye-tracking quality deteriorates during an experimental session due to head movements, changing illumination or calibration decay. Additionally, different experimental paradigms require the analysis of different types of eye movements; for instance, smooth pursuit movements, blinks or microsaccades, which themselves cannot readily be evaluated by using spatial accuracy or precision alone. To obtain a more comprehensive description of properties, we developed an extensive eye-tracking test battery. In 10 different tasks, we evaluated eye-tracking related measures such as: the decay of accuracy, fixation durations, pupil dilation, smooth pursuit movement, microsaccade classification, blink classification, or the influence of head motion. For some measures, true theoretical values exist. For others, a relative comparison to a reference eye-tracker is needed. Therefore, we collected our gaze data simultaneously from a remote EyeLink 1000 eye-tracker as the reference and compared it with the mobile Pupil Labs glasses. As expected, the average spatial accuracy of 0.57° for the EyeLink 1000 eye-tracker was better than the 0.82° for the Pupil Labs glasses (N = 15). Furthermore, we classified less fixations and shorter saccade durations for the Pupil Labs glasses. Similarly, we found fewer microsaccades using the Pupil Labs glasses. The accuracy over time decayed only slightly for the EyeLink 1000, but strongly for the Pupil Labs glasses. Finally, we observed that the measured pupil diameters differed between eye-trackers on the individual subject level but not on the group level. To conclude, our eye-tracking test battery offers 10 tasks that allow us to benchmark the many parameters of interest in stereotypical eye-tracking situations and addresses a common source of confounds in measurement errors (e.g., yaw and roll head movements). All recorded eye-tracking data (including Pupil Labs’ eye videos), the stimulus code for the test battery, and the modular analysis pipeline are freely available (https://github.com/behinger/etcomp).

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“…To avoid negative values for the likelihood we take the maximum between the subtraction and 0. Our assumption is that each fixation is chosen either from the local attention map described in Eq (2) or the global attention map described in Eq (4). This can be represented as a mixture model…”

Section: Plos Computational Biologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, the decision process for an upcoming saccade target poses a dilemma: should the observer further exploit the information near the fovea or continue with exploration of other patches within the given scene? The latter problem is critical for scene viewing [3,4] and relevant to the broader field of cognitive processes in knowledge acquisition [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A mathematical model of local and global attention in natural scene viewing

et al. 2020

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Understanding the decision process underlying gaze control is an important question in cognitive neuroscience with applications in diverse fields ranging from psychology to computer vision. The decision for choosing an upcoming saccade target can be framed as a selection process between two states: Should the observer further inspect the information near the current gaze position (local attention) or continue with exploration of other patches of the given scene (global attention)? Here we propose and investigate a mathematical model motivated by switching between these two attentional states during scene viewing. The model is derived from a minimal set of assumptions that generates realistic eye movement behavior. We implemented a Bayesian approach for model parameter inference based on the model’s likelihood function. In order to simplify the inference, we applied data augmentation methods that allowed the use of conjugate priors and the construction of an efficient Gibbs sampler. This approach turned out to be numerically efficient and permitted fitting interindividual differences in saccade statistics. Thus, the main contribution of our modeling approach is two–fold; first, we propose a new model for saccade generation in scene viewing. Second, we demonstrate the use of novel methods from Bayesian inference in the field of scan path modeling.

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Probing the temporal dynamics of the exploration–exploitation dilemma of eye movements

Cited by 19 publications

References 130 publications

The World as an External Memory: The Price of Saccades in a Sensorimotor Task

The World as an External Memory: The Price of Saccades in a Sensorimotor Task

A new comprehensive eye-tracking test battery concurrently evaluating the Pupil Labs glasses and the EyeLink 1000

A mathematical model of local and global attention in natural scene viewing

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