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. 2017 Dec 13;10(5):10.16910/jemr.10.5.8.
doi: 10.16910/jemr.10.5.8.

Research Article

Jonathan Allsop  1 , Rob Gray  2 , Heinrich H Bülthoff  3 , Lewis Chuang  3
Affiliations

Research Article

Jonathan Allsop et al. J Eye Mov Res. .

Abstract

In this study, we demonstrate the effects of anxiety and cognitive load on eye movement planning in an instrument flight task adhering to a single-sensor-single-indicator data visualisation design philosophy. The task was performed in neutral and anxiety conditions, while a low or high cognitive load, auditory n-back task was also performed. Cognitive load led to a reduction in the number of transitions between instruments, and impaired task performance. Changes in self-reported anxiety between the neutral and anxiety conditions positively correlated with changes in the randomness of eye movements between instruments, but only when cognitive load was high. Taken together, the results suggest that both cognitive load and anxiety impact gaze behavior, and that these effects should be explored when designing data visualization displays.

Keywords: anxiety; attention; cognitive load; entropy; eye tracking; heart rate; instruments.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declare(s) that the contents of the article are in agreement with the ethics described in http://biblio.unibe.ch/portale/elibrary/BOP/jemr/ethics.html and that there is no conflict of interest regarding the publication of this paper.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
A: Schematic representation of the instrument landing task from a side-on (red outline) and top-down (blue outline) view (not to scale). Participants attempt to follow the ideal vertical (glideslope) and lateral (localiser) paths using the cockpit instruments. B: Layout of the heads-down instrument panel showing, from top-left, in a clockwise direction: attitude direction indicator, altimeter, instrument landing course deviation indicator, vertical speed indicator, heading indicator. The instruments required to track the ideal: vertical path are outlined in red, and lateral path are outlined in blue. C: Photograph of the experimental setup showing the heads-down instrument panel, back-projection screen, control devices and eye-tracking cameras
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Mean (S.E.M) cognitive anxiety (left panel) and heart rate (right panel) plotted as a function of cognitive load in neutral (dashed line) and anxiety (solid line) conditions.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Mean (S.E.M) n-back percent correct (left panel) and reaction time (right panel) plotted as a function of cognitive load in neutral (dashed line) and anxiety (solid line) conditions.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Mean (S.E.M) percentage dwell time on the external world and the generalized instrument panel AOIs, in the neutral conditions (Panel A) and anxiety conditions (Panel B) in low cognitive load and high cognitive load conditions.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Scatter plot with linear regression lines showing the relationship between change in cognitive anxiety and change in entropy, in low (dashed line) and high (solid line) cognitive load conditions
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Mean scanning entropy (S.E.M) plotted as a function of anxiety condition for the high (solid line) and low (dashed line) anxiety manipulation response groups
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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    1. Allsop J., Gray R., Bulthoff H. H., & Chuang L. (2016). Effects of anxiety and cognitive load on instru-ment scanning behavior in a flight simulation. In 2016 IEEE Second Workshop on Eye Tracking and Visualiza-tion (ETVIS) (pp. 55–59). https://doi.org/10.1109/ETVIS.2016.7851167 - DOI
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