Spatial thinking from a different view: Disentangling top-down and bottom-up processes using eye tracking

Abstract

The goal of the present study was to investigate the potential of gaze fixation patterns to reflect cognitive processing steps during test performance. Gaze movements, however, can reflect top-down and bottom-up processes. Top-down processes are the cognitive processing steps that are necessary to solve a certain test item. In contrast, bottom-up processes may be provoked by varying visual features that are not related to the item solution. To disentangle top-down and bottom-up processes in the context of spatial thinking, a new test (R-Cube-Vis Test) was developed and validated explicitly for the usage of eye tracking in three studies as long and short version. The R-Cube-Vis Test measures visualization and is conform to the linear logistic test model with six difficulty levels. All items of one level demand the same transformation steps to solve an item. The R-Cube-Vis Test was then utilized to investigate different gaze-fixation-based indicators to identify top-down and bottom-up processes. Some of the indicators were also able to predict the correctness of the answer of a single item. Gaze-related measures have a high potential to reveal cognitive processing steps during solving an item of a given difficulty level, if top-down and bottom-up processes can be segregated.

Optimizing the usage of pupillary based indicators for cognitive workload

“…The goal of the present study was to investigate the Index of Cognitive Activity (ICA, Marshall, 2002) and the Index of Pupillary Activity (IPA, Duchowski et al, 2018) as pupillary based indicators for cognitive workload systematically with respect to different cognitively demanding tasks, influence of fatigue, effect of standardization for controlling individual differences, and using difference values of the eyes instead of the mean. To this end, a performance test for visualization, the R-Cube-Vis Test (Fehringer, 2020b), with six distinct difficulty levels was conducted to analyze the ICA/IPA behavior over different cognitive demanding tasks. The fatigue effect was investigated by two simple fixations tasks, one before and one after the R-Cube-Vis Test.…”

“…The short version of the R-Cube-Vis Test (Fehringer, 2020b) was administered as the performance test. The test measures the main factor of spatial thinking, visualization, and it was constructed especially for the usage of eye tracking and pupillometry.…”

“…First, the ordering of the accuracy values of the six difficulty levels of the R-Cube-Vis Test were compared with the expected accuracy ordering known from the validation studies (Fehringer, 2020b). Second, the precision of both fixation tasks (before and after the R-Cube-Vis Test) were compared with each other to make sure that the participants performed both fixation tasks with the same task engagement as precondition for the following analysis of the fatigue effect.…”

Upper-Secondary Students’ Strategies for Spatial Tasks

“…Considering this, we can observe what information is used in different phases of the decision-making process using eye-tracking. Then, the eyetracking data have the potential to explain the solving behavior and the strategies for spatial tasks (Fehringer 2020).…”

R-Cube-SR Test

“…After each item, the participants were asked for their confidence on a 4-point-scale. The weighted accuracy (wACC), a combined measure based on the accuracy over all possible items and the respective confidence rating, was considered for analyses (Fehringer, 2020).…”