Eye Fixation Patterns Research Articles

Eye fixation patterns for categorizing static and dynamic facial expressions.

Facial expressions of emotion are dynamic in nature, but most studies on the visual strategies underlying the recognition of facial emotions have used static stimuli. The present study directly compared the visual strategies underlying the recognition of static and dynamic facial expressions using eye tracking and the Bubbles technique. The results revealed different eye fixation patterns with the 2 kinds of stimuli, with fewer fixations on the eye and mouth area during the recognition of dynamic than static expressions. However, these differences in eye fixations were not accompanied by any systematic differences in the facial information that was actually processed to recognize the expressions. (PsycINFO Database Record

Relationship between eye fixation patterns and Kansei evaluation of 3D chair forms

Understanding how to induce Kansei (emotion or affect) in consumers through form is critical in product design and development. Conventional Kansei evaluations, which involve subjectively evaluating the overall form of a product, do not clarify the effects of the individual parts of a product on people’s Kansei evaluation. A microscale analysis of eye movement of people looking at product form may redeem this flaw in subjective evaluation. However, simultaneously recording eye movement when people making Kansei evaluation is challenging, previous studies have typically investigated either the relationship between form and eye movement or the relationship between form and Kansei separately. The eye movement of people while performing Kansei evaluations on product forms still has not been clarified. To address this issue, the present study used an eye tracking system to analyze the changes in the fixation points of people performing various Kansei evaluations. Twenty participants were recruited for 8 Kansei evaluations on the form of 16 chairs by using the semantic differential (SD) rating, while their eye movements on these evaluations were tracked simultaneously. Through factor analysis on the data of Kansei evaluations, two principal factors, valence (pleasure) and arousal, were extracted from the 8 Kansei scales to constitute a Kansei plane which is compatible to Russell’s circumplex model (plane) of affect By adopting the factor scores of the 16 chairs as coordinates, the 16 chairs were mapped into the Kansei plane. Further analysis on the eye fixation on the chairs located in this plane concluded the following results: (a) Pleasure had a more significant effect on the participants’ visual attention compared to arousal; the participants required more fixation points when evaluating the chair form that induced displeasure. (b) The participants typically fixated on two parts of the chairs during their Kansei evaluations, namely the seat and the backrest, indicating that seats and backrests are the two primary features people consider when evaluating chairs. The results clarify the effect of various Kansei on eye movements; thereby enable predicting people’s Kansei evaluations of product forms through analyzing their eye movement.

Social attention and autism symptoms in high functioning women with autism spectrum disorders

BackgroundResearch has suggested a different, less visible, clinical manifestation of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) in females. There is, however, limited research into possible underlying mechanisms explaining the female phenotype. AimsThis study investigates social attention in females with ASD. Methods and procedures26 women diagnosed with ASD and 26 typical female controls were shown three video clips containing intense emotions. Social attention was assessed by measuring eye fixation patterns during the video clips. Autism symptoms were assessed using the informant reported Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Outcome and resultsResults show normal time to first fixation to the face, but lower fixation duration to the face in women with ASD. Analyzing the visual patterns further, there were similar impairments in fixation to mouth, eyes and other facial areas. Relating social attention to autism symptoms revealed several significant correlations within the ASD group. Conclusions and implicationsWomen with ASD show abnormalities in social attention and these abnormalities are related to level of autism symptoms. In contrast to other studies which investigate male dominated ASD samples, a hyperfocus to the mouth area could not be found.

New patterns of eye fixations in sentence comprehension in aphasia

New patterns of eye fixations in sentence comprehension in aphasia

Supplemental Material for Eye Fixation Patterns for Categorizing Static and Dynamic Facial Expressions

Supplemental Material for Eye Fixation Patterns for Categorizing Static and Dynamic Facial Expressions

Down Syndrome Cognitive Constraints to Recognize Negative Emotion Face Information: Eye Tracking Correlates

Eye gaze correlates to emotion face recognition were obtained from a sample with Down syndrome (DS) as well as from a sample of typical individuals to look for gaze pattern differences between both. The goal was to determine if possible face scanning patterns might be related to different styles of cognitive automatic processing of emotion faces information. First, after IQ control, participants were required to take an affective priming study. This emotion recognition studies allowed appropriate selection of DS showing typical negative face recognition difficulties. Then, both samples took a formative eye tracking study in order to identify gaze correlates typifying them. Results showed that participants with DS have atypical eye fixation patterns regarding emotion faces recognition. In particular, they seem to intentionally avoid fixating on the eyes of presented photographs of emotion faces. This face scanning patterns might contribute to their difficulties to recognize negative face information. It is argued that this kind of cognitive processing of emotion facial information obeys to an acquired affective style.

Beyond the use of an Explanatory Key Accompanying Submicroscopic Representations.

When learning chemistry, students encounter various visualizations introducing scientific concepts and processes unobservable to the naked eye. It is often assumed that these visualizations support students' understanding and enable them to solve problems more efficiently. The research presented here investigates students' use of an explanatory key while solving tasks based on submicroscopic representations. The following features of the explanatory key were examined: 1) colored versus black-and-white, and 2) pictorial versus textual. Eye-fixation patterns and students' verbal explanations indicated that the presence of color in the key does not influence students' task solving. However, significant differences were observed with regard to a textual versus pictorial key used in the tasks: students spent more time and fixated more frequently on the key while solving tasks using a textual key in comparison to a pictorial key. The results indicate that the type of explanatory key might play an important role in revealing students' representational competence with regard to submicroscopic representations.

Investigating the Spatial Pattern of Older Drivers’ Eye Fixation Behaviour and Associations with Their Visual Capacity

Visual capacity generally declines as people age, yet its impact on visual search patterns along different road sections of actual driving still remains undocumented. In this on-road driving study, we simultaneously recorded 30 older drivers’ eye movement and precise vehicle movement trajectories. The vehicle positions were linked to every eye fixation of individual drivers so that we know the locations of a driver's gaze origin in geospatial coordinates. Spatial distribution pattern of drivers’ eye fixations (duration and frequency) were then analysed. We further investigated the associations between older drivers’ visual capacity (processing speed, divided and selective attention) and their eye fixation patterns in various driving manoeuvres. The results indicate that driving scenarios have significant impact on older drivers’ visual patterns. Older drivers performed more frequent eye fixations when manoeuvreing through roundabouts, while they tended to fixate on certain objects much longer during straight road driving. The key findings show that the processing speed and divided attention of older drivers were associated with their eye fixations at complex right-turns; drivers with a lower capacity for selective attention performed less frequent eye fixations at roundabout manoeuvres. This study has also demonstrated that visualisation and spatial statistics are effective and intuitive approaches in eye movement analysis.

Same Same, but Different: Word and Sentence Reading in German and English

ABSTRACTThe current study compared eye fixation patterns during word and sentence processing in a consistent and an inconsistent alphabetic orthography. German and English children as well as adults matched on word reading ability read matched sentences while their eye fixation behavior was recorded. Results indicated that German children read in a more small-unit plodder-like style with more diligent first-pass reading and less rereading. In contrast, English children read in a more large-unit explorer-like style with a greater tendency to skip words, and more regressions. It is important that these cross-linguistic processing differences largely persisted in the adult readers. Orthographic consistency thus influences both local word recognition and global sentence processing in developing and skilled readers.

The effects of culture and context on perceptions of robotic facial expressions

We report two experimental studies of human perceptions of robotic facial expressions while systematically varying context effects and the cultural background of subjects (n = 93). Except for Fear, East Asian and Western subjects were not significantly different in recognition rates, and, while Westerners were better at judging affect from mouth movement alone, East Asians were not any better at judging affect based on eye/brow movement alone. Moreover, context effects appeared capable of over-riding such cultural differences, most notably for Fear. The results seem to run counter to previous theories of cultural differences in facial expression based on emoticons and eye fixation patterns. We connect this to broader research in cognitive science – suggesting the findings support a dynamical systems view of social cognition as an emergent phenomenon. The results here suggest that, if we can induce appropriate context effects, it may be possible to create culture-neutral models of robots and affective interaction.

The pupillary response discriminates between subjective and objective familiarity and novelty

The pupil response discriminates between old and new stimuli, with old stimuli characterized by larger pupil dilation patterns than new stimuli. We sought to explore the cause of the pupil old/new effect and discount the effect of targetness, effort, recollection retrieval, and complexity of the recognition decision. Two experiments are reported in which the pupil response and the eye fixation patterns were measured, while participants identified novel and familiar object stimuli, in two separate tasks, emphasizing either novelty or familiarity detection. In Experiment 1, familiarity and novelty decisions were taken using a rating scale, while in Experiment 2 a simpler yes/no decision was used. In both experiments, we found that detection of target familiar stimuli resulted in greater pupil dilation than the detection of target novel stimuli, while the duration of the first fixation discriminated between familiar and novel stimuli as early as within 320 ms after stimulus onset. Importantly, the pupil response distinguished between the objective (during an earlier temporal component) and the subjective (during a later temporal component) status of the stimulus for misses and false alarms. In the light of previous findings, we suggest that the pupil and fixation old/new effects reflect the distinct neural and cognitive mechanisms involved in the familiarity and novelty decisions. The findings also have important implications for the use of pupil dilation and eye movement patterns to explore explicit and implicit memory processes.

Processing modifier–head agreement in L1 and L2 Finnish: An eye-tracking study

This study investigated the effect of first language (L1) on the reading of modifier–head case agreement in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Russian is similar to Finnish in that both languages use case endings to mark grammatical roles, whereas such markings are absent in Chinese. The critical nouns were embedded in sentences, where the head noun was either preceded by an agreeing modifier or the modifier was absent. Readers’ eye fixation patterns were used as indices of online processing. Both natives and non-natives showed a facilitatory effect of agreement; reading head nouns was easier when they were preceded by an agreeing modifier. Typological distance in terms of the structural complexity of words between L1 and L2 did not influence the processing.

Spatial Pattern of Eye Fixations and Evidence of Ultradian Rhythms in Aircraft Pilots.

Eye fixations can be distributed in three ways: randomly, in clusters, and regularly. However, there is always a continuum among these types, because these spatial patterns are the result of a process evolving over time. The focus of the present work was to study the changes over time observed in the Nearest Neighbor Index (NNI), an index derived from the spatial distribution of eye fixations that has been reported to be sensitive to variations in mental workload. Of particular interest are periodic changes in the ultradian timescale (an ultradian rhythm is a recurrent period or cycle repeated throughout a 24-h circadian day). Data from a previously reported experiment were further analyzed using temporal spectral analysis, which is one of the most commonly used techniques for studying measurements collected at regularly spaced intervals of time. An ultradian rhythm with a periodicity between 2 and 15 min was found, which is compatible with results obtained by analyzing reaction times in prolonged vigilance tasks. The identification of a periodicity in the allocation of mental resources should be considered in the design of automation support that is dynamically matched to mental workload.

Faking in Job Applicants' Responses in Personality Tests: Evidence from A Eye-Tracking Study of Job Desirability

One of the important concerns in personnel selection process has been job applicants' faking behaviors in Personality tests(or measurement or evaluation). Although many studies have been done on faking behaviors in personality tests, no consensus has yet reached regarding the response processes of faking behaviors in personality tests. At present, researchers have proposed three mutually incompatible social–desirability–based response process models of faking in personality tests: the Self–Schema Model, the Sematic–Exercise Model and the Adopted–Schema Model. In the Adopted–Schema Model, test items are classified as social desirable and social undesirable, but items unrelated to social desirability are neglected. Besides, more and more researchers are inclined to consider faking in personnel selection as a job desirable behavior instead of a social desirable one. Therefore, this study tried to explore job applicants' faking response in personality tests from the perspective of job desirability with the help of eye–tracking techniques. First, fifty participants rated the job desirability of 44 items in Big Five Inventory(BFI-44). Based on the rating scores, BFI-44 items were classified into three categories: job desirable items, job undesirable items and items unrelated to job desirability. Second, in a within–subject simulation experiment design, another fifty participants completed the BFI-44 in two conditions – honest vs. faking in an eye–tracking laboratory. To eliminate order effect, these 50 participants were randomly assigned to the two groups. The first group went through the honest condition and then the faking condition. The second group followed the reversed order. The participants were instructed to complete six items from Mensa IQ test as a filler task between the two sessions. Item responses, response latencies, and eye movement index were recorded using Tobii 120. The results showed that test scores on all of the five dimensions of the Big Five Inventory under the faking condition were significantly higher than the scores under the honest condition. The response latencies on items in the categories of job desirable and job undesirable were significantly shorter in the faking condition than the response latencies in both categories in the honest condition. The number of eye fixations was significantly lower on the question stems than on the extreme options of the categories of items on job desirable and job undesirable in the faking condition, when compared with the honest condition. In the category of items unrelated to job desirability, the number of eye fixations was significantly more in the faking condition than in the honest condition. The same pattern of eye fixations was found on the options in the middle. In the faking condition, the participants' eyes fixed on extreme options(i.e., strongly disagree and strongly agree) more directly after reading the questions. These findings support the idea that faking leads to semantic–exercise interpretations on job desirable and job undesirable items, as well as self–schema interpretations on items unrelated to job desirability. The response process in the faking condition seemed to be simpler than the response process in the honest condition, when answering the items in the categories of job desirability and job undesirability. Based on the findings, the job–desirability–based Mixed–Exercise Model has been proposed, in an attempt to explain faking response in personality tests.

Eye Fixation Patterns Support Improved Guidance As The Source Of Reduced Search Times In Contextual Cueing

Eye Fixation Patterns Support Improved Guidance As The Source Of Reduced Search Times In Contextual Cueing

Learning differences and eye fixation patterns in virtual and physical science laboratories

This project analyzed high school students' performance and eye movement while learning in a simulation-based laboratory (SBL) and a microcomputer-based laboratory (MBL). Although the SBL and the MBL both used computers to collect, graph, and analyze data, the MBL involved manual manipulation of concrete materials, whereas the SBL displayed everything on a monitor. Fifty senior high school students at three urban public high schools in Taipei were randomly assigned to the MBL and SBL settings. The participants conducted the Boyle's Law experiment with an accompanying worksheet and completed pre- and post-conceptual tests. FaceLAB and ASL MobileEye were used to record each participant's eye movements in the SBL and MBL settings, respectively. The results showed that lower achievers improved significantly from the pre-to post-conceptual tests. The SBL group tended to carry out more experiments. Moreover, the MBL group's performance on the worksheet was moderately correlated with their post-test. However, this correlation was not found for the SBL group. Furthermore, at the beginning of the laboratories, the SBL group had a higher percentage of fixations with longer fixation duration, which implies more attention to and deeper cognitive processing of the equipment and running experiments, while the MBL group focused on the worksheet. This study concludes that, for e-learning like SBLs, students tend to start off doing an experiment, and then think about the questions on the worksheets, whereas for physical laboratories like MBLs, they tend to think before doing.

Do we really become smarter when our fluid-intelligence test scores improve?

Recent reports of training-induced gains on fluid intelligence tests have fueled an explosion of interest in cognitive training—now a billion-dollar industry. The interpretation of these results is questionable because score gains can be dominated by factors that play marginal roles in the scores themselves, and because intelligence gain is not the only possible explanation for the observed control-adjusted far transfer across tasks. Here we present novel evidence that the test score gains used to measure the efficacy of cognitive training may reflect strategy refinement instead of intelligence gains. A novel scanpath analysis of eye movement data from 35 participants solving Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices on two separate sessions indicated that one-third of the variance of score gains could be attributed to test-taking strategy alone, as revealed by characteristic changes in eye-fixation patterns. When the strategic contaminant was partialled out, the residual score gains were no longer significant. These results are compatible with established theories of skill acquisition suggesting that procedural knowledge tacitly acquired during training can later be utilized at posttest. Our novel method and result both underline a reason to be wary of purported intelligence gains, but also provide a way forward for testing for them in the future.

Eye fixation patterns and saccades of children with dyslexia in Japanese

Eye fixation patterns and saccades of children with dyslexia in Japanese

Do syllable-specific tonal probabilities guide lexical access? Evidence from Mandarin, Shanghai and Cantonese speakers

An eye-tracking study investigated how the interaction between syllable frequency and syllable-specific tonal probability guides online lexical access in speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects with three disparate tonal systems. Mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers, bi-dialectal Shanghai–Mandarin speakers and bi-dialectal Cantonese–Mandarin speakers searched for target Mandarin syllable–tone combinations while their eye movements and mouse clicks were recorded. The results showed dialectal differences in online eye fixation patterns but not in offline mouse responses. For all groups, mouse clicks were fastest for infrequent syllables with most probable tones and slowest for infrequent syllables with least probable tones. In online eye movement responses, only mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers showed an interaction between syllable frequency and tonal probability. Mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers’ fixations were fastest for infrequent syllables with probable tones and slowest for infrequent syllables with improbable tones. Mono-dialectal speakers also showed a greater amount of competition from the more probable segmental competitor when hearing improbable tones. Bi-dialectal speakers showed different timing in their integration of tonal probabilities. These findings suggest that highly bilingual speakers track and use Mandarin tonal probabilities, but their sensitivity to L2 tonal information may lag behind monolinguals for online word recognition.

Gaze‐driven Object Tracking for Real Time Rendering

AbstractTo efficiently deploy eye‐tracking within 3D graphics applications, we present a new probabilistic method that predicts the patterns of user's eye fixations in animated 3D scenes from noisy eye‐tracker data. The proposed method utilises both the eye‐tracker data and the known information about the 3D scene to improve the accuracy, robustness and stability. Eye‐tracking can thus be used, for example, to induce focal cues via gaze‐contingent depth‐of‐field rendering, add intuitive controls to a video game, and create a highly reliable scene‐aware saliency model. The computed probabilities rely on the consistency of the gaze scan‐paths to the position and velocity of a moving or stationary target. The temporal characteristic of eye fixations is imposed by a Hidden Markov model, which steers the solution towards the most probable fixation patterns. The derivation of the algorithm is driven by the data from two eye‐tracking experiments: the first experiment provides actual eye‐tracker readings and the position of the target to be tracked. The second experiment is used to derive a JND‐scaled (Just Noticeable Difference) quality metric that quantifies the perceived loss of quality due to the errors of the tracking algorithm. Data from both experiments are used to justify design choices, and to calibrate and validate the tracking algorithms. This novel method outperforms commonly used fixation algorithms and is able to track objects smaller then the nominal error of an eye‐tracker.