PDF(Pubmed)
Abstract：
How vision guides gaze in realistic settings has been researched for decades. Human gaze behavior is typically measured in laboratory settings that are well controlled but feature-reduced and movement-constrained, in sharp contrast to real-life gaze control that combines eye, head, and body movements. Previous real-world research has shown environmental factors such as terrain difficulty to affect gaze; however, real-world settings are difficult to control or replicate. Virtual reality (VR) offers the experimental control of a laboratory, yet approximates freedom and visual complexity of the real world (RW). We measured gaze data in 8 healthy young adults during walking in the RW and simulated locomotion in VR. Participants walked along a pre-defined path inside an office building, which included different terrains such as long corridors and flights of stairs. In VR, participants followed the same path in a detailed virtual reconstruction of the building. We devised a novel hybrid control strategy for movement in VR: participants did not actually translate: forward movements were controlled by a hand-held device, rotational movements were executed physically and transferred to the VR. We found significant effects of terrain type (flat corridor, staircase up, and staircase down) on gaze direction, on the spatial spread of gaze direction, and on the angular distribution of gaze-direction changes. The factor world (RW and VR) affected the angular distribution of gaze-direction changes, saccade frequency, and head-centered vertical gaze direction. The latter effect vanished when referencing gaze to a world-fixed coordinate system, and was likely due to specifics of headset placement, which cannot confound any other analyzed measure. Importantly, we did not observe a significant interaction between the factors world and terrain for any of the tested measures. This indicates that differences between terrain types are not modulated by the world. The overall dwell time on navigational markers did not differ between worlds. The similar dependence of gaze behavior on terrain in the RW and in VR indicates that our VR captures real-world constraints remarkably well. High-fidelity VR combined with naturalistic movement control therefore has the potential to narrow the gap between the experimental control of a lab and ecologically valid settings.
摘要：
视觉指南如何在现实环境中凝视已经研究了几十年。人的凝视行为通常在实验室环境中测量，这些环境控制良好，但特征减少和运动受限，与结合眼睛的现实生活中的凝视控制形成鲜明对比，头部,和身体动作。以前的现实世界研究表明，环境因素，如地形难以影响凝视;然而，真实世界的设置很难控制或复制。虚拟现实（VR）提供实验室的实验控制，然而，接近现实世界的自由和视觉复杂性（RW）。我们测量了8名健康年轻人在RW中行走和在VR中模拟运动期间的凝视数据。参与者沿着办公楼内预定义的路径行走，其中包括不同的地形，如长走廊和楼梯。在VR中,参与者在建筑物的详细虚拟重建中遵循相同的路径。我们为VR中的运动设计了一种新颖的混合控制策略：参与者实际上并没有翻译：前进运动是由手持设备控制的，旋转运动被物理地执行并转移到VR。我们发现地形类型的显著影响(平坦走廊，楼梯上去,和楼梯向下）注视方向，在凝视方向的空间传播上，以及凝视方向变化的角分布。因素世界（RW和VR）影响注视方向变化的角度分布，扫视频率,和头部中心的垂直凝视方向。后一种效果在将视线指向世界固定的坐标系时消失了，可能是由于耳机放置的细节，这不能混淆任何其他分析的措施。重要的是,对于任何测试措施，我们都没有观察到因素世界和地形之间的显着相互作用。这表明地形类型之间的差异不受世界的调节。导航标记上的总体停留时间在世界之间没有差异。在RW和VR中，凝视行为对地形的相似依赖性表明，我们的VR可以很好地捕获现实世界的约束。因此，高保真VR与自然运动控制相结合，有可能缩小实验室实验控制与生态有效设置之间的差距。
