Work

Eye-Tracking as a Lens into Expertise Development in Visual Search

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Visual search professionals frequently examine complex images in which they must locate and identify anomalies (e.g., tumors or lesions in medical images, hostile territories in maps) indicating the presence of important information. This is a difficult perceptual and cognitive challenge that requires years of experience even beyond domain-specific training. We developed a laboratory analogue of this task to examine how people development expertise over time and the changes that occur in visual scanning behaviors as this expertise accrues. Participants' eyes were tracked as they searched for subtle anomalies during and after different forms of training. Anomaly detection improved with experience and this improvement occurred more quickly in perceptual training conditions. Eye movement analyses revealed that participants' expertise conferred benefits in both scanning and recognition times. These results suggest that simple perceptual training methods can affect both cognitive and oculomotor components of visual search.

Source: Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction

DOI: 10.1145/3725837

Authors: Megan H. Papesh, Michael C. Hout, Giovanna C. Del Sordo, Bryan L. White, Ashley P. Mathis

Institutions: University of Massachusetts Lowell, New Mexico State University

Language: English

Topic: Visual Attention and Saliency Detection

Subfield: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Award: G620453595