VR Gaze and Head Dynamics

Most of what we know about how people attend to the world comes from lab studies where participants sit still and look at flat images on a screen. But in everyday life, we move our heads and bodies freely to explore our surroundings. With new Virtual Reality (VR) technology that includes eye and head tracking, we can now study how people naturally move their eyes and heads while interacting in realistic, yet tightly controlled, 3D environments. This project will examine how the eyes and head work together when people are performing complex tasks—like searching for objects or navigating spaces—in immersive VR. A key feature of the study is a “headlamp” setup that allows us control whether people use their eyes or head to find things, helping us understand how different kinds of movement guide attention. The findings will improve our understanding of how people look and act in the real world, and will also help Cognitive3D improve their VR platform by making it easier for clients to see where people are looking, even when they don’t have specialized eye-tracking hardware.

Faculty Supervisor:

Alan Kingstone

Student:

Partner:

Cognitive3D

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Professional, scientific and technical services

University:

The University of British Columbia

Program: