Gaze shifts during wayfinding decisions

TL;DR

This study examines how people use eye movements to make decisions when navigating through a series of rooms.

Contribution

The study provides new evidence against the hypothesis of gradual gaze shifts preceding wayfinding decisions.

Findings

On 88.9% of trials, gaze shifted directly from the cue to the chosen door with a single saccade.

Interim fixations occurred rarely and had different spatiotemporal characteristics than expected.

The results suggest that large saccades are avoided, not gradual gaze shifts.

Abstract

When following a route through a building or city, we must decide at every intersection in which direction to proceed. The present study investigates whether such decisions are preceded by a gradual gaze shift in the eventually chosen direction. Participants were instructed to repeatedly follow a route through a sequence of rooms by choosing, in each room, the correct door from among three possible doors. All rooms looked alike, except for a room-specific cue, which participants could associate with the direction to take. We found that on 88.9% of trials, the gaze shifted from the cue to the chosen door by a single saccade, without interim fixations. On the few trials where interim fixations occurred, their spatiotemporal characteristics differed significantly from that expected in case of a consistent shift. Both findings concordantly provide no support for the hypothesized gradual gaze shift. The infrequent interim fixations might rather serve the purpose to avoid large-amplitude saccades between cue and door.

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