Abstract
This study investigated how visual attention differed between those who correctly versus incorrectly answered introductory physics problems. We recorded eye movements of 24 individuals on six different conceptual physics problems where the necessary information to solve the problem was contained in a diagram. The problems also contained areas consistent with a novicelike response and areas of high perceptual salience. Participants ranged from those who had only taken one high school physics course to those who had completed a Physics Ph.D. We found that participants who answered correctly spent a higher percentage of time looking at the relevant areas of the diagram, and those who answered incorrectly spent a higher percentage of time looking in areas of the diagram consistent with a novicelike answer. Thus, when solving physics problems, top-down processing plays a key role in guiding visual selective attention either to thematically relevant areas or novicelike areas depending on the accuracy of a student's physics knowledge. This result has implications for the use of visual cues to redirect individuals' attention to relevant portions of the diagrams and may potentially influence the way they reason about these problems.
Highlights
Often diagrams in physics problems contain information that is both relevant to the solution of the problem and information that is irrelevant
We found that participants who answered correctly spent a higher percentage of time looking at the relevant areas of the diagram, and those who answered incorrectly spent a higher percentage of time looking in areas of the diagram consistent with a novicelike answer
Mixed factorial 2 Â 6 ANOVAs with proportion of time in each areas of interest (AOI) type as the dependent variable and problem number and correctness of answer as independent variables were conducted for all three AOI types
Summary
Often diagrams in physics problems contain information that is both relevant to the solution of the problem and information that is irrelevant. We use eye-movement data to infer the extent to which bottom-up and top-down processes influence people’s attention as they answer introductory conceptual physics questions containing diagrams We hypothesize that those with adequate domain knowledge to correctly answer a problem will spend more time fixating on thematically relevant areas of a diagram that provide the solution to the problem than on irrelevant areas of the diagram. We could predict that the fixated locations of those who answer incorrectly are more likely to be influenced by perceptual salience than those who have adequate domain knowledge Such effects would suggest a strong role for bottom-up factors in guiding attention during physics problem solving with diagrams. We examine the following three-part research question: How does the correctness or incorrectness of one’s answer to a physics problem involving a diagram relate to the time spent looking at those areas of the diagram that are (a) thematically relevant to the problem’s solution? (b) consistent with novicelike misconceptions? Or (c) perceptually salient?
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