Eye movement behaviours predict decision-making

Much is known about how our mind guides our attention as we visually process our environment. Visual search is guided by a marriage between internal (i.e., our explicit goals and objectives) and external (i.e., physical properties of objects) factors that influence our perception of the world around us. Recent work has shown that individuals vary in strategy when engaging in difficult search tasks. Moreover, these individual differences in strategy can reliably predict decision-making in much more sophisticated tasks, such as where to stand between two dartboards when you might have to throw a dart at either of them, or where to park a fire truck on the street when the probability of a fire in any house is unknown. This proposed collaboration will further explore the predictive relationship between visual search strategy and decision-making, specifically by teasing apart the fundamental factors known to drive search behaviour (internal goals vs. external experience). We will examine whether the mechanisms underlying these factors can predict search behviour across individuals, and then assess whether this predictive ability subsequently extends to the prediction of higher order decision-making.

Faculty Supervisor:

Raymond Klein

Student:

Partner:

University of Aberdeen

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Education

University:

Dalhousie University

Program: