Macaques preferentially attend to visual patterns with higher fractal dimension contours.

Animals' sensory systems evolved to efficiently process information from their environmental niches. Niches often include irregular shapes and rough textures (e.g., jagged terrain, canopy outlines) that must be navigated to find food, escape predators, and master other fitness-related challenges. For most primates, vision is the dominant sensory modality and thus, primates have evolved systems for processing complicated visual stimuli. One way to quantify information present in visual stimuli in natural scenes is evaluating their fractal dimension. We hypothesized that sensitivity to complicated geometric forms, indexed by fractal dimension, is an evolutionarily conserved capacity, and tested this capacity in rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Monkeys viewed paired black and white images of simulated self-similar contours that systematically varied in fractal dimension while their attention to the stimuli was measured using noninvasive infrared eye tracking. They fixated more frequently on, dwelled for longer durations on, and had attentional biases towards images that contain boundary contours with higher fractal dimensions. This indicates that, like humans, they discriminate between visual stimuli on the basis of fractal dimension and may prefer viewing informationally rich visual stimuli. Our findings suggest that sensitivity to fractal dimension may be a wider ability of the vertebrate vision system

Eye-tracking as a measure of cognitive effort for post-editing of machine translation

The three measurements for post-editing effort as proposed by Krings (2001) have been adopted by many researchers in subsequent studies and publications. These measurements comprise temporal effort (the speed or productivity rate of post-editing, often measured in words per second or per minute at the segment level), technical effort (the number of actual edits performed by the post-editor, sometimes approximated using the Translation Edit Rate metric (Snover et al. 2006), again usually at the segment level), and cognitive effort. Cognitive effort has been measured using Think-Aloud Protocols, pause measurement, and, increasingly, eye-tracking. This chapter provides a review of studies of post-editing effort using eye-tracking, noting the influence of publications by Danks et al. (1997), and O’Brien (2006, 2008), before describing a single study in detail. The detailed study examines whether predicted effort indicators affect post-editing effort and results were previously published as Moorkens et al. (2015). Most of the eye-tracking data analysed were unused in the previou

Eye tracking and the translation process: reflections on the analysis and interpretation of eye-tracking data

Eye tracking has become increasingly popular as a quantitative research method in translation research. This paper discusses some of the major methodological issues involved in the use of eye tracking in translation research. It focuses specifically on challenges in the analysis and interpretation of eye-tracking data as reflections of cognitive processes during translation. Four types of methodological issues are discussed in the paper. The first part discusses the preparatory steps that precede the actual recording of eye-tracking data. The second part examines critically the general assumptions linking eye movements to cognitive processing in the context of translation research. The third part of the paper discusses two popular eye-tracking measures often used in translation research, fixations and pupil size, while the fourth part proposes a method to evaluate the quality of eye-tracking data.El seguimiento ocular es un método de investigación cuantitativa de creciente popularidad en la investigación de la traducción. Este artículo aborda algunos de los aspectos metodológicos más importantes relativos el uso del seguimiento ocular en la investigación de la traducción. Se centra específicamente en el análisis y la interpretación de los datos de seguimiento ocular como reflejo de los procesos cognitivos durante la traducción. El artículo aborda cuatro tipos de aspectos metodológicos. La primera parte considera los pasos preparatorios previos a la grabación de datos. La segunda parte examina críticamente las hipótesis que vinculan los movimientos oculares al procesamiento cognitivo en el contexto de la investigación de la traducción. En la tercera parte se analizan dos parámetros de seguimiento ocular de uso frecuente en la investigación de la traducción (fijaciones y el tamaño pupilar), mientras que la cuarta parte propone un método para evaluar la calidad de los datos de seguimiento de los ojos

Mobility and Aging: Older Drivers’ Visual Searching, Lane Keeping and Coordination

This thesis examined older drivers’ mobility and behaviour through comprehensive measurements of driver-vehicle-environment interaction and investigated the associations between driving behaviour and cognitive functions. Data were collected and analysed for 50 older drivers using eye tracking, GNSS tracking, and GIS. Results showed that poor selective attention, spatial ability and executive function in older drivers adversely affect lane keeping, visual search and coordination. Visual-motor coordination measure is sensitive and effective for driving assessment in older drivers

Using Eye-Tracking Data to Compare Differences in Code Comprehension and Code Perceptions between Expert and Novice Programmers

Previous research has examined how eye-tracking metrics can serve as a proxy for directly measuring the amount of cognitive effort and processing required for comprehending computer code. We conducted a pilot study comprising expert (n = 10) and novice (n = 10) computer programmers to examine group differences in code comprehension abilities and perceptions. Programmers were asked to read two pieces of computer code, rate the code on various attributes, and then describe what the code does. Results indicate that experts and novices significantly differ in terms of their fixation counts made during the task, such that experts had more fixations than novices. This was counter to our hypothesis that experts would have fewer fixations than novices. We found no evidence that experts and novices differed in their average fixation durations, trustworthiness and performance perceptions, or willingness to reuse the code

Measuring the difficulty of text translation: The combination of text-focused and translator-oriented approaches

This paper explores the impact of text complexity on translators’ subjective perception of translation difficulty and on their cognitive load. Twenty-six MA translation students from a UK university were asked to translate three English texts with different complexity into Chinese. Their eye movements were recorded by an eye-tracker, and their cognitive load was self-assessed with a Likert scale before translation and NASA-TLX scales after translation. The results show that: (i) the intrinsic complexity measured by readability, word frequency and non-literalness was in line with the results received from informants’ subjective assessment of translation difficulty; (ii) moderate and positive correlations existed between most items in the self-assessments and the indicator (fixation and saccade durations) obtained by the eye-tracking measurements; and (iii) the informants’ cognitive load as indicated by fixation and saccade durations (but not for pupil size) increased significantly in two of the three texts along with the increase in source text complexity

Dynamics of Perceptual Organization in Complex Visual Search: The Identification of Self Organized Criticality with Respect to Visual Grouping Principles

The current project applies modern quantitative theories of visual perception to examine the effect of the Gestalt Law of proximity on visual cognition. Gestalt Laws are spontaneous dynamic processes (Brunswik & Kamiya, 1953; Wertheimer, 1938) that underlie the principles of perceptual organization. These principles serve as mental short-cuts, heuristic rule-of-thumb strategies that shorten decision-making time and allow continuous, efficient processing and flow of information (Hertwig & Todd, 2002). The proximity heuristic refers to the observation that objects near each other in the visual field tend to be grouped together by the perceptual system (Smith-Gratto & Fisher, 1999). Proximity can be directly quantified as the distance between adjacent objects (inter-object distances) in a visual array. Recent studies on eye movements have revealed the interactive nature of self organizing dynamic processes in visual cognition (Aks, Zelinsky, & Sprott, 2002; Stephen, & Mirman, 2010). Research by Aks and colleagues (2002) recorded eye-movements during a complex visual search task in which participants searched for a target among distracters. Their key finding was that visual search patterns are not randomly distributed, and that a simple form of temporal memory exists across the sequence of eye movements. The objective of the present research was to identify how the law of proximity impacts visual search behavior as reflected in eye movement patterns. We discovered that 1) eye movements are fractal; 2) more fractality will result in decreased reaction time during visual search, and 3) fractality facilitates the improvement of reaction times over blocks of trials. Results were interpreted in view of theories of cognitive resource allocation and perceptual efficiency. The current research could inspire potential innovations in computer vision, user interface design and visual cognition