Through the eyes of the expert: Evaluating holistic processing in architects through gaze-contingent viewing

Abstract

Studies in the psychology of visual expertise have tended to focus on a limited set of expert domains, such as radiology and athletics. Conclusions drawn from these data indicate that experts use parafoveal vision to process images holistically. In this study, we examined a novel, as-of-yet-unstudied class of visual experts-architects-expecting similar results. However, the results indicate that architects, though visual experts, may not employ the holistic processing strategy observed in their previously studied counterparts. Participants (n = 48, 24 architects, 24 naïve) were asked to find targets in chest radiographs and perspective images. All images were presented in both gaze-contingent and normal viewing conditions. Consistent with a holistic processing model, we expected two results: (1) architects would display a greater difference in saccadic amplitude between the gazecontingent and normal conditions, and (2) architects would spend less time per search than an undergraduate control group. We found that the architects were more accurate in the perspectival task, but they took more time and displayed a lower difference in saccadic amplitude than the controls. Our research indicates a disjunctive conclusion. Either architects are simply different kinds of visual experts than those previously studied, or we have generated a task that employs visual expertise without holistic processing. Our data suggest a healthy skepticism for across-the-board inferences collected from a single domain of expertise to the nature of visual expertise generally. More work is needed to determine whether holism is a feature of all visual expertise.

The role of creativity in expertise and skilled action

“…As with intelligent control for skill, there are likely many varieties of creativity that abide different degrees of automaticity and spontaneity. Carruthers (2011), for instance, suggests a 'constrained stochasticity' model of creativity which has it that in cases like improvisation (Berliner, 1994;Owens, 1995;Sudnow and Dreyfus, 2001;Baird, 2012) and spontaneous reaction (Runswick et al 2018;Ivy et al, 2021), creative events are "action-first," or represented in action prior to being representationally encoded by conscious thought. The actionfirst model has it that experts direct their course of action with a degree of stochasticity constrained by some rule or principle which serves to limit the stochastic nexus of possible actions to probably successful ones.…”

Visual expertise is more than meets the eye: an examination of holistic visual processing in radiologists and architects

“…Our prior work suggested that HVP, as a marker of visual expertise, was not present in the behaviors of architect subjects 24 . Yet, lacking further data, we were unable to determine why this was the case.…”

“…Architects (n=27, 7 female, and 20 male) held either master’s degree or a license to practice architecture. The data from the naïve and architect groups has been previously published in an original study 24 . The average age of architects was 42 (SD=11.63) who collectively averaged 19 years of experience (SD=12.12).…”

“…1, also see Ref. 24 for additional details). Eleven of these images contained a single geometric target out of perspective with the rest of the shapes.…”

“…In our first study of this phenomenon, 24 we hoped to find evidence of HVP in a class of visual experts who had yet to be formally researched: architects. To test architects, we developed a novel search task controlling for architects’ visual search strengths in geometric visualization, three-dimensional (3D) design, and parallel perspectives with what are called “zero-point perspective” images.…”