Gaze Shifts During Wayfinding Decisions

Overview

Journal Atten Percept Psychophys

Publisher Springer

Specialties Psychiatry
Psychology

Date 2023 Oct 18

PMID 37853168

Authors

Mai Geisen

Otmar Bock

Stefanie Klatt

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

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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