Scan patterns during real-world scene viewing predict individual differences in cognitive capacity

Abstract

From the earliest recordings of eye movements during active scene viewing to the present day, researchers have commonly reported individual differences in eye movement scan patterns under constant stimulus and task demands. These findings suggest viewer individual differences may be important for understanding gaze control during scene viewing. However, the relationship between scan patterns and viewer individual differences during scene viewing remains poorly understood because scan patterns are difficult to analyze. The present study uses a powerful technique called Successor Representation Scanpath Analysis (Hayes, Petrov, & Sederberg, 2011, 2015) to quantify the strength of the association between individual differences in scan patterns during real-world scene viewing and individual differences in viewer intelligence, working memory capacity, and speed of processing. The results of this analysis revealed individual differences in scan patterns that explained more than 40% of the variance in viewer intelligence and working memory capacity measures, and more than a third of the variance in speed of processing measures. The theoretical implications of our findings for models of gaze control and avenues for future individual differences research are discussed.

Eye gaze patterns reveal how we reason about fractions

“…Another important extension of this work would be to conduct a scan path analysis investigating the order of saccades within a trial, to better characterise strategy use (Hayes & Henderson, 2017). Indeed, different strategies would be expected to be associated with different sequences of eye movements; for example, an equivalent fractions strategy might be characterised by more horizontal saccades at the beginning of a trial than the end.…”

SNAG: Spoken Narratives and Gaze Dataset

“…Researchers have used gaze measurements to understand where drivers look and to identify differences in experts' and novices' viewing behaviors in domain-specific tasks (Underwood et al, 2003;Eivazi et al, 2012). Numerous studies highlight the potential of gaze data to shed light on how humans process information, make decisions, and vary in observer behaviors (Fiedler and Glöckner, 2012;Guo et al, 2014;Hayes and Henderson, 2017;Brunyé and Gardony, 2017). Eye tracking has also long been an important tool in psycholinguistics (Cooper, 1974;Rayner, 1998;Richardson and Dale, 2005;Shao et al, 2013).…”

Scan patterns during scene viewing predict individual differences in clinical traits in a normative sample

“…Based on their findings, Buswell and Yarbus suggested that gaze control in complex visual scenes is a function of the current task goals, the properties of the scene stimulus, and the properties of the viewer [ 1 , 2 ]. However, the vast majority of the scene literature has focused on the role of image properties and/or task goals [ 3 ], with little work on how viewer individual differences are related to scene gaze control [ 4 , 5 ]. As a result, very little is known about the relationship between viewer individual differences and gaze control during active scene viewing.…”

“…We [ 4 ] recently used an individual differences approach to establish an association between individual differences in viewer cognitive capacities and scan patterns during active scene viewing. Scan patterns, also referred to as scanpaths, [ 6 – 8 ], refer to the sequential pattern of stimulus fixations (See Fig 1 ).…”

“…Scan patterns, also referred to as scanpaths, [ 6 – 8 ], refer to the sequential pattern of stimulus fixations (See Fig 1 ). Our findings revealed individual differences in scene scan patterns that explained more than 40% of the variance in viewer intelligence and working memory capacity, and more than a third of the variance in speed of processing [ 4 ]. Our findings also revealed that only sequential eye movement patterns were capable of explaining significant variance in cognitive capacity, while other common fixation measures such as fixation duration, saccade amplitude, and fixation density could not.…”