Detecting ambient/focal visual attention in professional airline pilots with a modified Coefficient K: a full flight simulator study
- 2 June 2020
- conference paper
- conference paper
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in Symposium on Eye Tracking Research and Applications
Abstract
Flight instruments, from which a pilot monitors an aircraft, usually serve as areas-of-interest (AOI) that help to investigate the dynamics of the visual behavior of pilots. Consequently, several meta-metrics have been proposed to provide more information than common variables such as the number of fixations and saccades, the fixation durations, the saccade amplitude, and the standard dwell time. Researchers are however still searching for the best metrics for better insights into eye movements during scene exploration or inspection. In this work, we propose extending the formerly well established κ-coefficient metric defined by Krejtz et al. [2016] that allows discerning ambient and focal attention. Using AOI and transitions between them, we have derived a new measure that enables assessment of the distribution of visual attention (via eye-tracking data). Professional pilots’ eye movements were recorded while they were performing a flight scenario with full automation, including phases of flight (take-off, cruise, landing). Our analysis suggests that the take-off, cruise, and landing phases call for checking of specific areas, evidenced by the number of fixations and their durations. Furthermore, we compare our metric to the standard κ-coefficient and validate our approach using data collected during an experiment with 11 certified aircraft pilots. Here, we were able to show that the derived metric can be an interesting alternative for visual behavior investigation. The modified κ-coefficient can be used as a metric to investigate visual attention distribution, with application in cockpit monitoring assessment during training sessions or potentially during real flights.Keywords
This publication has 23 references indexed in Scilit:
- An Analysis of Pilot’s Physiological Reactions in Different Flight PhasesLecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
- Stable individual differences in saccadic eye movements during reading, pseudoreading, scene viewing, and scene search.Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2014
- Eye Movements as an Indicator of Situation Awareness in a Flight Simulator ExperimentThe International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 2012
- New insights into ambient and focal visual fixations using an automatic classification algorithmI-Perception, 2011
- Attentional Tunneling and Task Management in Synthetic Vision DisplaysThe International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 2009
- A Random Glance at the Flight Deck: Pilots' Scanning Strategies and the Real-Time Assessment of Mental WorkloadJournal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 2007
- Time course of information processing during scene perception: The relationship between saccade amplitude and fixation durationVisual Cognition, 2005
- The role of visual attention in saccadic eye movementsPerception & Psychophysics, 1995
- Situation Awareness: A Critical But Ill-Defined PhenomenonThe International Journal of Aviation Psychology, 1991
- The time course of picture viewing.Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1974