Abstract:A popular goal in psychological science is to understand human cognition and behavior in the 'real-world.' In contrast, researchers have typically conducted their research in experimental research settings, a.k.a. the 'psychologist's laboratory.' Critics have often questioned whether psychology's laboratory experiments permit generalizable results. This is known as the 'real-world or the lab'-dilemma. To bridge the gap between lab and life, many researchers have called for experiments with more 'ecological val… Show more
“…In a sense, this experimental arrangement should provide a better approximation to a “real world” social dynamic context, thus bearing higher ecological validity. However, the latter is a problematic claim (one good place to look for further reflection on these matters is Holleman et al, 2020 ). In what follows, we shall limit our discussion to particular contexts of social robotics.…”
Finding the underlying principles of social attention in humans seems to be essential for the design of the interaction between natural and artificial agents. Here, we focus on the computational modeling of gaze dynamics as exhibited by humans when perceiving socially relevant multimodal information. The audio-visual landscape of social interactions is distilled into a number of multimodal patches that convey different social value, and we work under the general frame of foraging as a tradeoff between local patch exploitation and landscape exploration. We show that the spatio-temporal dynamics of gaze shifts can be parsimoniously described by Langevin-type stochastic differential equations triggering a decision equation over time. In particular, value-based patch choice and handling is reduced to a simple multi-alternative perceptual decision making that relies on a race-to-threshold between independent continuous-time perceptual evidence integrators, each integrator being associated with a patch.
“…In a sense, this experimental arrangement should provide a better approximation to a “real world” social dynamic context, thus bearing higher ecological validity. However, the latter is a problematic claim (one good place to look for further reflection on these matters is Holleman et al, 2020 ). In what follows, we shall limit our discussion to particular contexts of social robotics.…”
Finding the underlying principles of social attention in humans seems to be essential for the design of the interaction between natural and artificial agents. Here, we focus on the computational modeling of gaze dynamics as exhibited by humans when perceiving socially relevant multimodal information. The audio-visual landscape of social interactions is distilled into a number of multimodal patches that convey different social value, and we work under the general frame of foraging as a tradeoff between local patch exploitation and landscape exploration. We show that the spatio-temporal dynamics of gaze shifts can be parsimoniously described by Langevin-type stochastic differential equations triggering a decision equation over time. In particular, value-based patch choice and handling is reduced to a simple multi-alternative perceptual decision making that relies on a race-to-threshold between independent continuous-time perceptual evidence integrators, each integrator being associated with a patch.
“…Tower-mounted eye trackers restrict both the chin and the head and film the eyes from above (see Fig. 1 c in Holleman, Hooge, Kemner, & Hessels, 2020 for a picture of a typical tower-mounted eye tracker). Fig.…”
There is a long history of interest in looking behavior during human interaction. With the advance of (wearable) video-based eye trackers, it has become possible to measure gaze during many different interactions. We outline the different types of eye-tracking setups that currently exist to investigate gaze during interaction. The setups differ mainly with regard to the nature of the eye-tracking signal (head- or world-centered) and the freedom of movement allowed for the participants. These features place constraints on the research questions that can be answered about human interaction. We end with a decision tree to help researchers judge the appropriateness of specific setups.
“…Still, maintaining control over stimulus parameters in real-world studies can be difficult, and testing has often been limited to viewing static scenes. Despite these efforts, there still remains a need to develop adaptable and controllable stimuli for the purposes of investigating visual search performance using behavioral paradigms that can be considered as more ecologically valid ( Bennett, Bex, Bauer, & Merabet, 2019 ; Helbing, Draschkow, & Võ, 2020 ; Parsons, 2011 ; Parsons, 2015 ; Parsons & Duffield, 2019 ; for further discussion, see Holleman, Hooge, Kemner, & Hessels, 2020 ). In this direction, virtual reality (VR) has gained considerable interest as a way to approach issues related to task realism, immersion, adaptability, and experimental control, and it has even found a growing application in clinical and behavioral neuroscience research (for reviews, see Bouchard, 2019 ; Parsons & Phillips, 2016 ; Tarr & Warren, 2002 ).…”
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