Abstract
Eye movements provide very critical information about the cognitive load and behaviors of human beings. Earlier studies report that under normal conditions, the left- and right-eye pupil sizes are equal. For this reason, most studies undertaking eye-movement analysis are conducted by only considering the pupil size of a single eye or taking the average size of both eye pupils. This study attempts to offer a better understanding concerning whether there are any differences between the left- and right-eye pupil sizes of the right-handed surgical residents while performing surgical tasks in a computer-based simulation environment under different conditions (left-hand, right-hand and both hands). According to the results, in many cases, the right-eye pupil sizes of the participants were larger than their left-eye pupil sizes while performing the tasks under right-hand and both hands conditions. However, no significant difference was found in relation to the tasks performed under left-hand condition in all scenarios. These results are very critical to shed further light on the cognitive load of the surgical residents by analyzing their left-eye and right-eye pupil sizes. Further research is required to investigate the effect of the difficulty level of each scenario, its appropriateness with the skill level of the participants, and handedness on the differences between the leftand right-eye pupil sizes.
Highlights
Today, with the technological improvements, it has become possible to measure the pupil size of individuals
In order to fully grasp the influence of the experience level and hand condition on the mental workload of surgical residents, the right-eye and left-eye pupil sizes of 20 right-handed participants were examined using computerbased simulated surgical tasks included in four scenarios, namely catch, reach, clean, and follow
This study revealed certain differences between the left and right pupil sizes of the novice and intermediate surgical residents
Summary
With the technological improvements, it has become possible to measure the pupil size of individuals. It is known that the task involved the right hand movements causes a unilateral activation of the left central sulcus in the hand region of the motor homunculus (Simon, Mangin, Cohen, Le Bihan, & Dehaene, 2002) Even it is accepted as an important measure, the left- and right-eye pupil sizes of individuals have not yet been compared under different conditions. The main assumption of this study is that even the left and right pupil sizes are equal under normal conditions (Blumenfeld, 2002), and under different hand conditions, some differences may be observed when performing endo-neurosurgery tasks Revealing these differences will help demonstrate the closer connections between the cognitive load and skill-based task performance. This information can elucidate the behaviors of groups with different skill levels
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