Present Eye-tracking Study Research Articles

Embodied cognition and L2 sentence comprehension: an eye-tracking study of motor representations.

Evidence from neuroscience and behavioral research has indicated that language meaning is grounded in our motor-perceptual experiences of the world. However, the question of whether motor embodiment occurs at the sentence level in L2 (second language) comprehension has been raised. Furthermore, existing studies on motor embodiment in L2 have primarily focused on the lexical and phrasal levels, often providing conflicting and indeterminate results. Therefore, to address this gap, the present eye-tracking study aimed to explore the embodied mental representations formed during the reading comprehension of L2 action sentences. Specifically, it sought to identify the types of motor representations formed during L2 action sentence comprehension and the extent to which these representations are motor embodied. A total of 56 advanced L2 learners participated in a Sentence-Picture Verification Task, during which their response times (RTs) and eye movements were recorded. Each sentence-picture pair depicted an action that either matched or mismatched the action implied by the sentence. Data analysis focused on areas of interest around the body effectors. RTs in the mismatch condition indicated an impeding effect. Furthermore, fixations on the body effector executing an action were longer in the mismatch condition, especially in late eye-movement measures.

Dynamic suppression of likely distractor locations: Task-critical modulation

ABSTRACT When a distractor frequently appears in a certain region of a search display, it interferes less with performance, reflecting learned distractor suppression. While this effect is well established, it remains unknown whether this suppression is ongoing (tonic) or deactivated upon task completion (phasic). To address this, the present eye-tracking study examined the time course of distractor suppression. Participants searched for and compared two targets to determine whether to make a response or withhold responding (“No-go” trials). The No-go trials allowed observation of post-decision suppression via eye movements. Response-critical target features either remained present for the whole trial (Experiment 1) or were removed halfway through (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, distractors in the frequent region were substantially less likely to attract eye movements, including after inspection of both targets. However, in Experiment 2, the post-target distractor-region effect disappeared when the response-critical information was removed, indicating that suppression operates phasically and flexibly.

People also ask: How does this tool affect exploration-exploitation strategies with regard to prior domain knowledge and search context? An eye-tracking study

With the diversification of Internet uses, online content type has become richer. Alongside organic results, search engine results pages now provide tools to improve information searching and learning. The People also ask (PAA) box is intended to reduce users' cognitive costs by offering easily accessible information. Nevertheless, there has been scant research on how users actually process it, compared with more traditional content type (i.e., organic results and online documents). The present eye-tracking study explored this question by considering the search context (complex lookup task vs. exploratory task) and users' prior domain knowledge (high vs. low). Main results show that users fixated the PAA box and online documents more to achieve exploratory goals, and fixated organic results more to achieve lookup goals. Users with low knowledge process PAA content at an early stage in their search contrary to their counterparts with high knowledge. Given these results, information system developers should diversify PAA content according to search context and users’ prior domain knowledge.

Recognizing and Looking at Masked Emotional Faces in Alexithymia.

Alexithymia is a clinically relevant personality construct characterized by difficulties identifying and communicating one's emotions and externally oriented thinking. Alexithymia has been found to be related to poor emotion decoding and diminished attention to the eyes. The present eye tracking study investigated whether high levels of alexithymia are related to impairments in recognizing emotions in masked faces and reduced attentional preference for the eyes. An emotion recognition task with happy, fearful, disgusted, and neutral faces with face masks was administered to high-alexithymic and non-alexithymic individuals. Hit rates, latencies of correct responses, and fixation duration on eyes and face mask were analyzed as a function of group and sex. Alexithymia had no effects on accuracy and speed of emotion recognition. However, alexithymic men showed less attentional preference for the eyes relative to the mask than non-alexithymic men, which was due to their increased attention to face masks. No fixation duration differences were observed between alexithymic and non-alexithymic women. Our data indicate that high levels of alexithymia might not have adverse effects on the efficiency of emotion recognition from faces wearing masks. Future research on gaze behavior during facial emotion recognition in high alexithymia should consider sex as a moderating variable.

Deployment of attention to facial expressions varies as a function of emotional quality-but not in alexithymic individuals.

Alexithymia is a risk factor for emotional disorders and is characterized by differences in automatic and controlled emotion processing. The multi-stimulus free-viewing task has been used to detect increased negative and reduced positive attentional biases in depression and anxiety. In the present eye-tracking study, we examined whether lexical emotional priming directs attention toward emotion-congruent facial expressions and whether alexithymia is related to impairments in lexical priming and spontaneous attention deployment during multiple face perception. A free-viewing task with happy, fearful, angry, and neutral faces shown simultaneously was administered to 32 alexithymic and 46 non-alexithymic individuals along with measures of negative affect and intelligence. Face presentation was preceded by masked emotion words. Indices of initial orienting and maintenance of attention were analyzed as a function of prime or target category and study group. Time to first fixation was not affected by prime category or study group. Analysis of fixation duration yielded a three-way interaction. Alexithymic individuals exhibited no prime or target category effect, whereas non-alexithymic individuals showed a main effect of target condition, fixating happy faces longer than neutral and angry faces and fearful faces longer than angry faces. Our results show evidence of attentional biases for positive and fearful social information in non-alexithymic individuals, but not in alexithymic individuals. The lack of spontaneous attentional preference for these social stimuli in alexithymia might contribute to a vulnerability for developing emotional disorders. Our data also suggest that briefly presented emotion words may not facilitate gaze orientation toward emotion-congruent stimuli.

Positive attentional bias mediates the relationship between trait emotional intelligence and trait affect

Emotional intelligence and, in particular, the component emotion regulation may increase well-being and improve mood and coping with negative emotions. In the present eye-tracking study, we examined whether attention allocation to positive stimuli mediates the relationship between emotion regulation abilities and trait affect. Gaze behavior of 104 healthy adults was analyzed in a free-viewing task, in which happy, sad, angry, and neutral faces were shown simultaneously for ten seconds. Dwell time on facial expressions was used as indicator of attention allocation. Trait emotional intelligence was assessed using the Self-Rated Emotional Intelligence Scale. Self-report measures of state and trait positive and negative affect, trait anxiety, and depression were administered. In general, participants viewed longer at happy than at negative or neutral faces. The results of mediation analyses indicated that intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation abilities were indirectly related to trait positive affect through attention to happy faces. Moreover, dwell time on happy faces had a mediating effect on the relationship between interpersonal emotion regulation ability and trait anxiety. Preference for positive social signals might form one attentional pathway through which emotion regulation abilities promote positive mood and buffer the development of anxiety reactions in everyday life.

Are you looking or looking away? Visual exploration and avoidance of disgust- and fear-stimuli: An eye-tracking study.

The present eye-tracking study investigates whether individuals with different levels of contamination fear are more likely to focus their attention on disgusting stimuli to explore them or to pull their attention away to avoid them. Ninety-two nonclinical participants with varying degrees of contamination fear performed a dot probe task. Eye-tracking methodology was employed to record gaze patterns during the task. In each trial participants looked at two pictures (disgust-neutral, fear-neutral, or neutral-neutral). Participants were further asked about the contents of the picture and the confidence of their answer. The results show that reaction times were slower and fixations were longer and more frequent for disgust targets compared with fear and neutral targets, which was further amplified in individuals with high contamination fear. However, image details of disgusting pictures were remembered less correctly than details of fearful pictures. These findings confirm the idea that attention on disgusting stimuli is maintained. Further, the findings indicate that disgust is processed more superficially and might also be related to disgust-associated uncertainty and ambiguity. The results may help to understand the difficult-to-change nature of disgust, which could be relevant to habituation and extinction processes in exposure therapy. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Esports and Visual Attention: Evaluating In-Game Advertising through Eye-Tracking during the Game Viewing Experience.

In recent years, technological advances and the introduction of social streaming platforms (e.g., Twitch) have contributed to an increase in the popularity of esports, a highly profitable industry with millions of active users. In this context, there is little evidence, if any, on how users perceive in-game advertising (IGA) and other key elements of the game viewing experience (e.g., facecam and chat) in terms of visual attention. The present eye-tracking study aimed at investigating those aspects, and introducing an eye-tracking research protocol specifically designed to accurately measure the visual attention associated with key elements of the game viewing experience. Results showed that (1) the ads available in the game view (IGAs) are capable altogether to attract 3.49% of the users’ visual attention; (2) the chat section draws 10.68% of the users’ visual attention and more than the streamer’s face, known as a powerful attentional driver; (3) the animated ad format elicits higher visual attention (1.46%) than the static format (1.12%); and (4) in some circumstances, the visual attention elicited by the ads is higher in the “Goal” scenes (0.69%) in comparison to “No-Goal” scenes (0.51%). Relevant managerial implications and future directions for the esports industry are reported and discussed.

Locality and attachment preferences in preverbal versus post-verbal Relative Clauses

ABSTRACT The universality of locality is a long-standing debate that has endured in psycholinguistics in spite of the challenges. The non-local preference of attachment in Relative Clauses (RCs) with double antecedent (DP1-of-DP2-RC) reported in a subset of languages (i.e. Spanish) represented an important challenge that locality-based accounts had to address. The forces responsible for attachment preferences turned out to be multifactorial, with relevant roles for prosody, referentiality, lexical semantics and Pseudo-Relative availability. In the present eye-tracking study, we explore the timing of disambiguation in Spanish DP1-of-DP2-RC structures placed in preverbal and post-verbal positions, while also controlling for the previously mentioned influencing factors. Our results are straightforward: an early processing cost arises when the RC is disambiguated non-locally, irrespective of the position. The implications of this work contribute to a better understanding of parsing processes and suggest that locality is at the centre of the forces that influence RC attachment.

Infants' visual exploration strategies for adult and child faces.

By the end of the first year of life, infants' discrimination abilities tune to frequently experienced face groups. Little is known about the exploration strategies adopted to efficiently discriminate frequent, familiar face types. The present eye-tracking study examined the distribution of visual fixations produced by 10-month-old and 4-month-old singletons while learning adult (i.e., familiar) and child (i.e., unfamiliar) White faces. Infants were tested in an infant-controlled visual habituation task, in which post-habituation preference measured successful discrimination. Results confirmed earlier evidence that, without sibling experience, 10-month-olds discriminate only among adult faces. Analyses of gaze movements during habituation showed that infants' fixations were centered in the upper part of the stimuli. The mouth was sampled longer in adult faces than in child faces, while the child eyes were sampled longer and more frequently than the adult eyes. At 10months, but not at 4months, global measures of scanning behavior on the whole face also varied according to face age, as the spatiotemporal distribution of scan paths showed larger within- and between-participants similarity for adult faces than for child faces. Results are discussed with reference to the perceptual narrowing literature, and the influence of age-appropriate developmental tasks on infants' face processing abilities.

Bilingual vs. Monolingual Readers: Insights from Eye-Tracking Data

The present eye-tracking study examines silent and oral text reading by Russian-German bilinguals of two age groups (9-10 and 15-16 years) and compares it with their monolingual peers. The bilingual sample represents so-called heritage speakers of Russian who know both the Latin and the Cyrillic script. The paper relies on two global eye movement measures – the averaged total fixation count and the averaged total fixation duration per token – and analyses the effects of three factors: <em>language profile, age</em>, and <em>reading mode</em>. In both age groups, bilinguals made a higher number of fixations per token and fixated the token longer than their peers. This observation holds for both languages and reading modes. However, the gap between bilinguals and their peers was much larger in Russian, and interindividual variation was greater in Russian than in German. The better results in German can be explained by its status as the primary medium of instruction and its dominance in everyday literacy, but the prolonged information processing in both languages suggests the activation of both linguistic systems and their mental lexicon, even if only one language has been triggered by the task. Notably, general language command, more specifically, lexical knowledge and reading experience play a decisive role in reading acquisition and behaviour. These insights should be considered by the educational practice at school as well as by scientific research in multilingualism.

The influence of emotional salience on gaze behavior in low and high trait empathy: an exploratory eye-tracking study

ABSTRACT Previous studies have shown that situational factors like emotional salience are associated with higher subjective levels of state empathy. The present eye-tracking study explored whether gaze behavior varies as a function of emotional salience between individuals with low and high self-reported trait empathy. In a between-subjects design, we presented three social scene images in the context of different emotion conditions (Scene 1: neutral versus positive; Scene 2: neutral versus negative; Scene 3: positive versus negative) and assessed the dwell times of individuals with low versus high self-reported empathy (measured with the Toronto Empathy Questionnaire; TEQ). Analyses revealed that whereas low- and high-TEQ participants differed in their gaze behavior after receiving neutral information, they did not differ after receiving positive or negative information. Our preliminary results suggest that gaze behavior may be more indicative of self-reported trait empathy in situations with low emotional salience than in situations with high emotional salience.

Effects of Self-Esteem on Self-Viewing: An Eye-Tracking Investigation on Mirror Gazing.

While some people enjoy looking at their faces in the mirror, others experience emotional distress. Despite these individual differences concerning self-viewing in the mirror, systematic investigations on this topic have not been conducted so far. The present eye-tracking study examined whether personality traits (self-esteem, narcissism propensity, self-disgust) are associated with gaze behavior (gaze duration, fixation count) during free mirror viewing of one’s face. Sixty-eight adults (mean age = 23.5 years; 39 females, 29 males) viewed their faces in the mirror and watched a video of an unknown person matched for gender and age (control condition) for 90 s each. The computed regression analysis showed that higher self-esteem was associated with a shorter gaze duration for both self-face and other-face. This effect may reflect a less critical evaluation of the faces.

Object individuation and labelling in 6-month-old infants

The ability to determine how many objects are involved in physical events is fundamental for reasoning about the world that surrounds us. Previous studies suggest that infants can fail to individuate objects in ambiguous occlusion events until their first birthday and that learning words for the objects may play a crucial role in the development of this ability. The present eye-tracking study tested whether the classical object individuation experiments underestimate young infants’ ability to individuate objects and the role word learning plays in this process. Three groups of 6-month-old infants (N = 72) saw two opaque boxes side by side on the eye-tracker screen so that the content of the boxes was not visible. During a familiarization phase, two visually identical objects emerged sequentially from one box and two visually different objects from the other box. For one group of infants the familiarization was silent (Visual Only condition). For a second group of infants the objects were accompanied with nonsense words so that objects’ shape and linguistic labels indicated the same number of objects in the two boxes (Visual & Language condition). For the third group of infants, objects’ shape and linguistic labels were in conflict (Visual vs. Language condition). Following the familiarization, it was revealed that both boxes contained the same number of objects (e.g. one or two). In the Visual Only condition, infants looked longer to the box with incorrect number of objects at test, showing that they could individuate objects using visual cues alone. In the Visual & Language condition infants showed the same looking pattern. However, in the Visual vs Language condition infants looked longer to the box with incorrect number of objects according to linguistic labels. The results show that infants can individuate objects in a complex object individuation paradigm considerably earlier than previously thought and that linguistic cues enforce their own preference in object individuation. The results are consistent with the idea that when language and visual information are in conflict, language can exert an influence on how young infants reason about the visual world.

Alexithymia Is Associated With Deficits in Visual Search for Emotional Faces in Clinical Depression.

Background: The concept of alexithymia is characterized by difficulties identifying and describing one's emotions. Alexithymic individuals are impaired in the recognition of others' emotional facial expressions. Alexithymia is quite common in patients suffering from major depressive disorder. The face-in-the-crowd task is a visual search paradigm that assesses processing of multiple facial emotions. In the present eye-tracking study, the relationship between alexithymia and visual processing of facial emotions was examined in clinical depression.Materials and Methods: Gaze behavior and manual response times of 20 alexithymic and 19 non-alexithymic depressed patients were compared in a face-in-the-crowd task. Alexithymia was empirically measured via the 20-item Toronto Alexithymia-Scale. Angry, happy, and neutral facial expressions of different individuals were shown as target and distractor stimuli. Our analyses of gaze behavior focused on latency to the target face, number of distractor faces fixated before fixating the target, number of target fixations, and number of distractor faces fixated after fixating the target.Results: Alexithymic patients exhibited in general slower decision latencies compared to non-alexithymic patients in the face-in-the-crowd task. Patient groups did not differ in latency to target, number of target fixations, and number of distractors fixated prior to target fixation. However, after having looked at the target, alexithymic patients fixated more distractors than non-alexithymic patients, regardless of expression condition.Discussion: According to our results, alexithymia goes along with impairments in visual processing of multiple facial emotions in clinical depression. Alexithymia appears to be associated with delayed manual reaction times and prolonged scanning after the first target fixation in depression, but it might have no impact on the early search phase. The observed deficits could indicate difficulties in target identification and/or decision-making when processing multiple emotional facial expressions. Impairments of alexithymic depressed patients in processing emotions in crowds of faces seem not limited to a specific affective valence. In group situations, alexithymic depressed patients might be slowed in processing interindividual differences in emotional expressions compared with non-alexithymic depressed patients. This could represent a disadvantage in understanding non-verbal communication in groups.

Semantic congruency effects of prime words on tool visual exploration

Most recent research on human tool use highlighted how people might integrate multiple sources of information through different neurocognitive systems to exploit the environment for action. This mechanism of integration is known as “action reappraisal”. In the present eye-tracking study, we further tested the action reappraisal idea by devising a word-priming paradigm to investigate how semantically congruent (e.g., “nail”) vs. semantically incongruent words (e.g., “jacket”) that preceded the vision of tools (e.g., a hammer) may affect participants' visual exploration of them. We found an implicit modulation of participants' temporal allocation of visuospatial attention as a function of the object-word consistency. Indeed, participants tended to increase over time their fixations on tools' manipulation areas under semantically congruent conditions. Conversely, participants tended to concentrate their visual-spatial attention on tools’ functional areas when inconsistent object-word pairs were presented. These results support and extend the information-integrated perspective of the action reappraisal approach. Also, these findings provide further evidence about how higher-level semantic information may influence tools' visual exploration.

(Eye-) Tracking the Other-Race Effect: Comparison of Eye Movements During Encoding and Recognition of Ingroup Faces With Proximal and Distant Outgroup Faces

People experience difficulties recognizing faces of ethnic outgroups, known as the other-race effect. The present eye-tracking study investigates if this effect is related to differences in visual attention to ingroup and outgroup faces. We measured gaze fixations to specific facial features and overall eye-movement activity level during an old/new recognition task comparing ingroup faces with proximal and distal ethnic outgroup faces. Recognition was best for ingroup faces and decreased gradually for proximal and distal outgroup faces. Participants attended more to the eyes of ingroup faces than outgroup faces, but this effect was unrelated to recognition performance. Ingroup-outgroup differences in eye-movement activity level did not emerge during the study phase, but during the recognition phase, with ingroup-outgroup differences varying as a function of recognition accuracy and old/new effects. Overall, ingroup-outgroup effects on recognition performance and eye movements were more pronounced for recognition of new items, emphasizing the role of retrieval processes.

The Closer, The Better? Processing Relations Between Picture Elements in Historical Paintings.

The present eye-tracking study investigated how audio explanations influence perception and the cognitive processing of historical paintings. Spatially close and distant pairs of picture elements and their semantic relations were named in an audio text either immediately after each other or with descriptions of other elements in between. It was assumed that the number of backward fixation counts on the first of the two mentioned related picture elements should be higher if they are spatially close rather than spatially distant. There should also be more backward fixation counts if the elements are named temporally close rather than temporally distant. Similar predictions were made for the retention of these picture elements and their relations. A 2x2x2 within-subject design (n=36) with spatial distance (close vs. distant), temporal distance (close vs. distant) and painting (Leutze vs. West) revealed more background fixation counts for spatially close compared to spatially distant elements but just for the Leutze painting. Accordingly, the relations between the spatially close pairs were retained better than between the spatially distant pairs in the Leutze painting but vice versa for the West painting. The results are discussed with regard to the spatial contiguity principle of multimedia learning and research on text coherence.

Attentional bias in veterans with deployment-related posttraumatic stress disorder before and after internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy – An eye-tracking investigation

Abstract Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often exhibit an attentional bias towards trauma-relevant or generally threatening and negative stimuli. Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) has been demonstrated to be efficacious in the treatment of PTSD. However, a previous study by our own group failed to find a symptom reduction following ICBT in a sample of traumatized veterans. No previous studies have examined the usefulness of ICBT in terms of modifying attentional bias in PTSD. In an eye-tracking experiment, veterans with deployment-related PTSD were presented with combat-related pictures and general threat-related pictures. These target stimuli were simultaneously displayed with neutral pictures. Additionally, participants were presented with pairs of emotional and neutral faces. Participants received ICBT, and attentional bias was examined pre- and post-intervention and at three-month follow-up. No significant changes in attentional bias were observed, either from pre- to post-intervention or at follow-up. The findings suggest that attentional bias reduction is associated with, rather than being separable from, overall PTSD symptom improvement. The present eye-tracking study was the first longitudinal investigation to examine the effect of ICBT on PTSD-related attentional bias in a sample of veterans. More research is needed to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms of attentional bias in PTSD and its modifiability.

Attention Dynamics During Emotion Recognition by Deaf and Hearing Individuals.

The enhancement hypothesis suggests that deaf individuals are more vigilant to visual emotional cues than hearing individuals. The present eye-tracking study examined ambient-focal visual attention when encoding affect from dynamically changing emotional facial expressions. Deaf (n = 17) and hearing (n = 17) individuals watched emotional facial expressions that in 10-s animations morphed from a neutral expression to one of happiness, sadness, or anger. The task was to recognize emotion as quickly as possible. Deaf participants tended to be faster than hearing participants in affect recognition, but the groups did not differ in accuracy. In general, happy faces were more accurately and more quickly recognized than faces expressing anger or sadness. Both groups demonstrated longer average fixation duration when recognizing happiness in comparison to anger and sadness. Deaf individuals directed their first fixations less often to the mouth region than the hearing group. During the last stages of emotion recognition, deaf participants exhibited more focal viewing of happy faces than negative faces. This pattern was not observed among hearing individuals. The analysis of visual gaze dynamics, switching between ambient and focal attention, was useful in studying the depth of cognitive processing of emotional information among deaf and hearing individuals.