How task demands influence scanpath similarity in a sequential number-search task
Dewhurst, Richard ; Foulsham, Tom ; Jarodzka, Halszka ; Johansson, Roger LU
; Holmqvist, Kenneth
and Nyström, Marcus
LU
(2018)
In Vision Research
p.9-23
- Abstract
- More and more researchers are considering the omnibus eye movement sequence—the scanpath—in their studies of visual and cognitive processing (e.g. Hayes, Petrov, & Sederberg, 2011; Madsen, Larson, Loschky, & Rebello, 2012; Ni et al., 2011; von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2011). However, it remains unclear how recent methods for comparing scanpaths perform in experiments producing variable scanpaths, and whether these methods supplement more traditional analyses of individual oculomotor statistics. We address this problem for MultiMatch (Jarodzka et al., 2010; Dewhurst et al., 2012), evaluating its performance with a visual search-like task in which participants must fixate a series of target numbers in a prescribed order. This... (More)
- More and more researchers are considering the omnibus eye movement sequence—the scanpath—in their studies of visual and cognitive processing (e.g. Hayes, Petrov, & Sederberg, 2011; Madsen, Larson, Loschky, & Rebello, 2012; Ni et al., 2011; von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2011). However, it remains unclear how recent methods for comparing scanpaths perform in experiments producing variable scanpaths, and whether these methods supplement more traditional analyses of individual oculomotor statistics. We address this problem for MultiMatch (Jarodzka et al., 2010; Dewhurst et al., 2012), evaluating its performance with a visual search-like task in which participants must fixate a series of target numbers in a prescribed order. This task should produce predictable sequences of fixations and thus provide a testing ground for scanpath measures. Task difficulty was manipulated by making the targets more or less visible through changes in font and the presence of distractors or visual noise. These changes in task demands led to slower search and more fixations. Importantly, they also resulted in a reduction in the between-subjects scanpath similarity, demonstrating that participants’ gaze patterns became more heterogenous in terms of saccade length and angle, and fixation position. This implies a divergent strategy or random component to eye-movement behaviour which increases as the task becomes more difficult. Interestingly, the duration of fixations along aligned vectors showed the opposite pattern, becoming more similar between observers in 2 of the 3 difficulty manipulations. This provides important information for vision scientists who may wish to use scanpath metrics to quantify variations in gaze across a spectrum of perceptual and cognitive tasks. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/25f6f716-ddd4-4f15-9d7d-3e1ce791ef91
- author
- Dewhurst, Richard
; Foulsham, Tom
; Jarodzka, Halszka
; Johansson, Roger
LU
; Holmqvist, Kenneth
and Nyström, Marcus
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2018-08
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Microsaccades, Monocular, Eye-tracker data
- in
- Vision Research
- pages
- 15 pages
- publisher
- Elsevier
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85048150224
- pmid:29857021
- ISSN
- 1878-5646
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.visres.2018.05.006
- project
- Thinking in Time: Cognition, Communication and Learning
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 25f6f716-ddd4-4f15-9d7d-3e1ce791ef91
- date added to LUP
- 2018-05-17 09:15:22
- date last changed
- 2023-02-02 02:31:55
@article{25f6f716-ddd4-4f15-9d7d-3e1ce791ef91,
abstract = {{More and more researchers are considering the omnibus eye movement sequence—the scanpath—in their studies of visual and cognitive processing (e.g. Hayes, Petrov, & Sederberg, 2011; Madsen, Larson, Loschky, & Rebello, 2012; Ni et al., 2011; von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2011). However, it remains unclear how recent methods for comparing scanpaths perform in experiments producing variable scanpaths, and whether these methods supplement more traditional analyses of individual oculomotor statistics. We address this problem for MultiMatch (Jarodzka et al., 2010; Dewhurst et al., 2012), evaluating its performance with a visual search-like task in which participants must fixate a series of target numbers in a prescribed order. This task should produce predictable sequences of fixations and thus provide a testing ground for scanpath measures. Task difficulty was manipulated by making the targets more or less visible through changes in font and the presence of distractors or visual noise. These changes in task demands led to slower search and more fixations. Importantly, they also resulted in a reduction in the between-subjects scanpath similarity, demonstrating that participants’ gaze patterns became more heterogenous in terms of saccade length and angle, and fixation position. This implies a divergent strategy or random component to eye-movement behaviour which increases as the task becomes more difficult. Interestingly, the duration of fixations along aligned vectors showed the opposite pattern, becoming more similar between observers in 2 of the 3 difficulty manipulations. This provides important information for vision scientists who may wish to use scanpath metrics to quantify variations in gaze across a spectrum of perceptual and cognitive tasks. © 2018 Elsevier Ltd}},
author = {{Dewhurst, Richard and Foulsham, Tom and Jarodzka, Halszka and Johansson, Roger and Holmqvist, Kenneth and Nyström, Marcus}},
issn = {{1878-5646}},
keywords = {{Microsaccades; Monocular; Eye-tracker data}},
language = {{eng}},
pages = {{9--23}},
publisher = {{Elsevier}},
series = {{Vision Research}},
title = {{How task demands influence scanpath similarity in a sequential number-search task}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2018.05.006}},
doi = {{10.1016/j.visres.2018.05.006}},
year = {{2018}},
}