Eye Movements Of Participants Research Articles

Beyond common and privileged: Gradient representations of common ground in real-time language use

The present research tested the hypothesis that on-line language processing is guided by gradient representations of linguistic common ground that reflect details of how common ground was established, including the discourse context and partner feedback. This hypothesis was contrasted with a simpler hypothesis that interpretation processes are only sensitive to simple binary representations of whether a potential discourse referent is or is not common ground. In order to evaluate these hypotheses, participants engaged in a task-based conversation with an experimenter in which some of the participant's game-pieces were hidden from the experimenter. On critical trials, the participant revealed the identity of the hidden game-pieces. Critical utterances contained referring expressions temporarily ambiguous between a visually shared game-piece, and a hidden game-piece. Analysis of participant eye movements during interpretation of these utterances revealed that participants were more likely to consider the hidden game-piece a potential referent if the experimenter had initially asked about its identity; whether the experimenter provided clear feedback that s/he understood its identity modulated this effect somewhat. These results provide key evidence for the richness of common ground representations, and are discussed in terms of the implications for models of the underlying representations of common ground.

Attentional Window Set by Expected Relevance of Environmental Signals

The existence of an attentional window—a limited region in visual space at which attention is directed—has been invoked to explain why sudden visual onsets may or may not capture overt or covert attention. Here, we test the hypothesis that observers voluntarily control the size of this attentional window to regulate whether or not environmental signals can capture attention. We have used a novel approach to test this: participants eye-movements were tracked while they performed a search task that required dynamic gaze-shifts. During the search task, abrupt onsets were presented that cued the target positions at different levels of congruency. The participant knew these levels. We determined oculomotor capture efficiency for onsets that appeared at different viewing eccentricities. From these, we could derive the participant's attentional window size as a function of onset congruency. We find that the window was small during the presentation of low-congruency onsets, but increased monotonically in size with an increase in the expected congruency of the onsets. This indicates that the attentional window is under voluntary control and is set according to the expected relevance of environmental signals for the observer's momentary behavioral goals. Moreover, our approach provides a new and exciting method to directly measure the size of the attentional window.

ディスプレイ―ＩＤＷ’１０を中心に―高精細画像の見やすい視距離に関する一検討

We provide a subjective and objective evaluation of the viewability of high-definition images. First, we examined the preferred viewing distance for images of different sizes, including monoscopic and stereoscopic ones. Second, we measured the eye movements of participants on comparing the preferred with the non-preferred viewing distance. The results indicate two points. First, for larger images (greater than 70 in.), including either stereoscopic or monoscopic images, the preferred viewing distance is 2.0 to 2.5 times the absolute display height. Second, eye movement may determine a person's preferred viewing distances. These results could provide a guideline for the design of the visual environment, including larger, stereoscopic display systems with high-definition.

Capturing and Analyzing Visual Groupings of Multiple Moving Targets in an Aircraft Conflict Detection Task Using Eye Movements

An eye movement study has been conducted to investigate if and how visual groupings are formed for an aircraft conflict detection task (ACDT) with multiple moving targets. We define visual grouping (VG) as a group of two or more targets in which a participant's eye movements have shown a greater number of transitions between or among the targets. In order to identify and compare the VGs, a short algorithm is proposed and evaluated. The experiment results reveal that VGs can be captured and clustered. Also, the clustered VGs are identical to the uncertain pair(s) of aircraft that may have loss of separation (LOS) under co-altitude. This study is one necessary step in performing further eye movement studies to better understand cognitive processes for a dynamic task, especially an ACDT.

The Effect of Context on Humor: A Constraint-Based Model of Comprehending Verbal Jokes

Two experiments were conducted to assess the effects of various constraints on the processing of jokes. Participants read humorous jokes and nonhumorous alternatives of the jokes, which were presented in 3 conditions that manipulated discourse context (comedy, political, and control). In Experiment 1, participants rated the funniness of texts and provided some recall data. In Experiment 2, participant's eye movements were collected to examine the effects of the different contexts on the online processing of the texts. Results confirmed that context constraints reliably impact how jokes are appreciated and processed, but the patterns of results were sometimes counterintuitive—namely, constraints of the discourse context appear to influence the processing of verbal jokes early on, whereas constraints associated with the text type strongly affect later processing and the results of processing, including recall. A constraint-based model is offered as a theoretical account for these findings.

Mapping Emotion Category Boundaries Using a Visual Expectation Paradigm

Past research showing categorical perception of emotional facial expressions has relied on identification and discrimination tasks that require an explicit response via keypress. Here we report a new paradigm for investigating the category boundary of emotional facial expressions that, instead, relies on an implicit response--eye direction. Participants were trained to expect a target stimulus on a particular side of the monitor, predicted by an emotional expression on a face image. An eye-tracker then recorded eye movements of participants as they viewed novel intermediate facial-expression stimuli. Anticipatory eye movement was taken as evidence of categorisation. Results from two experiments suggest that this implicit method can be used to determine category boundaries, and that the boundaries found with this method are similar to those found with the keypress response.

On-line effects of what is expected on the resolution of plural pronouns

According to Presupposition Denial Theory, complement set reference is reference to a shortfall set which can be implied by a negative quantifier. In support of this, Moxey (2006) showed that participants produce plural pronominal reference to the complement set when a character is introduced who expects more than the amount denoted by a positive quantifier. It is not clear however whether the existence of a shortfall influences on-line comprehension. In this paper, we report four experiments measuring the eye movements of participants while they read short passages of text. In each experiment, we manipulate focus on the shortfall by introducing an expected amount before the quantified set. Our results suggest that eye movements are indeed influenced by the existence of a shortfall whether the shortfall is implied by the quantifier, or by the expectations of a salient character. This is consistent with the predictions of Presupposition Denial Theory.

Eye-tracking study of inanimate objects

Unlike the animate objects, where participants were consistent in their looking patterns, for inanimates it was difficult to identify both consistent areas of fixations and a consistent order of fixations. Furthermore, in comparison to animate objects, in animates received significantly shorter total looking time, shorter longest looks and a smaller number of overall fixations. However, as with animates, looking patterns did not systematically differ between the naming and non-naming conditions. These results suggested that animacy, but not labelling, impacts on looking behavior in this paradigm. In the light of feature-based accounts of semantic memory organization, one could interpret these findings as suggesting that processing of the animate objects is based on the saliency/diagnosticity of their visual features (which is then reflected through participants eye-movements towards those features), whereas processing of the inanimate objects is based more on functional features (which cannot be easily captured by looking behavior in such a paradigm).

Age- and Fatigue-related Markers of Human Faces: An Eye-Tracking Study

To investigate the facial cues that are used when making judgments about how old or tired a face appears. Experimental study. Forty-seven subjects: 15 male and 32 female participants, ranging from age 18 to 30 years. Forty-eight full-face digital images of "normal-appearing" patients were collected and uploaded to an eye-tracking system. We used an Applied Science Laboratories (Bedford, MA) Eye Tracker device associated with gaze-tracking software to record and calculate the gaze and fixation of the participants' left eye as they viewed images on a computer screen. After seeing each picture, participants were asked to assess the age of the face in the picture by making a selection on a rating scale divided into 5-year intervals; for fatigue judgments we used a rating scale from 1 (not tired) to 7 (most tired). The main outcome measure was gaze fixation, as assessed by tracking the eye movements of participants as they viewed full-face digital pictures. For fatigue judgments, participants spent the most time looking at the eye region (31.81%), then the forehead and the nose regions (14.99% and 14.12%, respectively); in the eye region, participants looked most at the brows (13.1%) and lower lids (9.4%). Participants spent more time looking at the cheeks on faces they rated as least tired than they did on those they rated as most tired (t = 2.079, P<0.05). For age judgments, the eye region (27.22%) and then the forehead (15.71%) and the nose (14.30%) had the highest frequencies of interest; in the eye region, the brows and lower lids also had the highest frequencies of interest (11.40% and 8.90%, respectively). Participants looked more at the brows (t = -2.63, P<0.05) and glabella (t = -3.28, P<0.01) in those faces they rated as looking the oldest. This study supports the hypothesis that age and fatigue judgments are related to preferential attention toward the eye region. Consequently, these results suggest that aesthetic or functional surgery to the eye region may be one of the most effective interventions in enhancing the appearance of an individual. The author(s) have no proprietary or commercial interest in any materials discussed in this article.

What can saliency models predict about eye movements? Spatial and sequential aspects of fixations during encoding and recognition

Saliency map models account for a small but significant amount of the variance in where people fixate, but evaluating these models with natural stimuli has led to mixed results. In the present study, the eye movements of participants were recorded while they viewed color photographs of natural scenes in preparation for a memory test (encoding) and when recognizing them later. These eye movements were then compared to the predictions of a well defined saliency map model (L. Itti & C. Koch, 2000), in terms of both individual fixation locations and fixation sequences (scanpaths). The saliency model is a significantly better predictor of fixation location than random models that take into account bias toward central fixations, and this is the case at both encoding and recognition. However, similarity between scanpaths made at multiple viewings of the same stimulus suggests that repetitive scanpaths also contribute to where people look. Top-down recapitulation of scanpaths is a key prediction of scanpath theory (D. Noton & L. Stark, 1971), but it might also be explained by bottom-up guidance. The present data suggest that saliency cannot account for scanpaths and that incorporating these sequences could improve model predictions.

Eye movements as direct tests of the GO model for the missing-letter effect

When asked to detect target letters while reading a text, participants miss more letters in frequently occurring function words than in less frequent content words. To account for this pattern of results, known as the missing-letter effect, Greenberg, Healy, Koriat, and Kreiner proposed the guidance-organization (GO) model, which integrates the two leading models of the missing-letter effect while incorporating innovative assumptions based on the literature on eye movements during reading. The GO model was evaluated by monitoring the eye movements of participants while they searched for a target letter in a continuous text display. Results revealed the usual missing-letter effect, and many empirical benchmark effects in eye movement literature were observed. However, contrary to the predictions of the GO model, response latencies were longer for function words than for content words. Alternative models are discussed that can accommodate both error and response latency data for the missing-letter effect.

An objective examination of consumer perception of nutrition information based on healthiness ratings and eye movements

Previous research on nutrition labelling has mainly used subjective measures. This study examines the effectiveness of two types of nutrition label using two objective measures: eye movements and healthiness ratings. Eye movements were recorded while participants made healthiness ratings for two types of nutrition label: standard and standard plus the Food Standards Agency's 'traffic light' concept. University of Derby, UK. A total of 92 participants (mean age 31.5 years) were paid for their participation. None of the participants worked in the areas of food or nutrition. For the standard nutrition label, participant eye movements lacked focus and their healthiness ratings lacked accuracy. The traffic light system helped to guide the attention of the consumer to the important nutrients and improved the accuracy of the healthiness ratings of nutrition labels. Consumers have a lack of knowledge regarding how to interpret nutrition information for standard labels. The traffic light concept helps to ameliorate this problem by indicating important nutrients to which to pay attention.

Orienting to social stimuli differentiates social cognitive impairment in autism and schizophrenia

Both autism and schizophrenia feature deficits in aspects of social cognition that may be related to amygdala dysfunction, but it is unclear whether these are similar or different patterns of impairment. We compared the visual scanning patterns and emotion judgments of individuals with autism, individuals with schizophrenia and controls on a task well characterized with respect to amygdala functioning. On this task, eye movements of participants are recorded as they assess emotional content within a series of complex social scenes where faces are either included or digitally erased. Results indicated marked abnormalities in visual scanning for both disorders. Controls increased their gaze on face regions when faces were present to a significantly greater degree than both the autism or schizophrenia groups. While the control and the schizophrenia groups oriented to face regions faster when faces were present compared to when they were absent, the autism group oriented at the same rate in both conditions. The schizophrenia group, meanwhile, exhibited a delay in orienting to face regions across both conditions, although whether anti-psychotic medication contributed to this effect is unclear . These findings suggest that while processing emotional information in social scenes, both individuals with autism and individuals with schizophrenia fixate faces less than controls, although only those with autism fail to orient to faces more rapidly based on the presence of facial information. Autism and schizophrenia may therefore share an abnormality in utilizing facial information for assessing emotional content in social scenes, but differ in the ability to seek out socially relevant cues from complex stimuli. Impairments in social orienting are discussed within the context of evidence suggesting the role of the amygdala in orienting to emotionally meaningful information.

Pictures and Spoken Descriptions Elicit Similar Eye Movements During Mental Imagery, Both in Light and in Complete Darkness

This study provides evidence that eye movements reflect the positions of objects while participants listen to a spoken description, retell a previously heard spoken description, and describe a previously seen picture. This effect is equally strong in retelling from memory, irrespective of whether the original elicitation was spoken or visual. In addition, this effect occurs both while watching a blank white board and while sitting in complete darkness. This study includes 4 experiments. The first 2 experiments measured eye movements of participants looking at a blank white board. Experiment 1 monitors eye movements of participants on 2 occasions: first, when participants listened to a prerecorded spoken scene description; second, when participants were later retelling it from memory. Experiment 2 first monitored eye movements of participants as they studied a complex picture visually, and then later as they described it from memory. The second pair of experiments (Experiments 3 and 4) replicated Experiments 1 and 2 with the only difference being that they were executed in complete darkness. This method of analysis differentiated between eye movements that are categorically correct relative to the positions of the whole eye gaze pattern (global correspondence) and eye movements that are only locally correct (local correspondence). The discussion relates the findings to the current debate on mental imagery.

Are stem homographs and orthographic neighbours processed differently during silent reading?

The aim of this research was to investigate the inhibitory effect of stem homographs—words that share stems but are morphologically unrelated— during reading. In Experiment 1 eye movements of participants were recorded while reading sentences that contained a target word preceded either by a stem homograph, an orthographically related or an unrelated control word. Target words were more difficult to read when preceded by stem homographs and orthographically related controls than when preceded by unrelated control words. However, no differences were found between stem homographs and unrelated controls. Two further priming experiments, one using the same stimuli as in Experiment 1 and the other using the same stimuli as in Allen and Badecker's (1999) failed to show an inhibitory effect of stem homographs distinguishable from the inhibitory effect of orthographic controls.

Understanding visual influence in graph design through temporal and spatial eye movement characteristics

We describe an experiment in which the eye movements of participants, carrying out tasks using two contrasting graph designs, were recorded by means of a remote eye tracking device. A variety of eye movement properties were measured and analysed both temporally and spatially. Both graph designs were based on specific psychological theories and established graph design guidelines. One incorporated attributes thought likely to enhance usability, the other included attributes likely to have the opposite effect. The results demonstrate that the design and location of a graph's legend and its spatial relationship to the data area are extremely important in determining a graph's usability. The incorporation of these and other design features may promote or detract from perceptual proximity and therefore influence a display's usability. The paper demonstrates that this influence is reflected in eye movement patterns, which can be readily monitored by means of a remote eye tracking system, and that a relatively simple temporal analysis of the results can give important insights as to how the usability of visual displays has been influenced.