Title
How Reliably Do Eye Parameters Indicate Internal Versus External Attentional Focus?
Abstract
Eye behavior is increasingly used as an indicator of internal versus external focus of attention both in research and application. However, available findings are partly inconsistent, which might be attributed to the different nature of the employed types of internal and external cognition tasks. The present study, therefore, investigated how consistently different eye parameters respond to internal versus external attentional focus across three task modalities: numerical, verbal, and visuo-spatial. Three eye parameters robustly differentiated between internal and external attentional focus across all tasks. Blinks, pupil diameter variance, and fixation disparity variance were consistently increased during internally directed attention. We also observed substantial attentional focus effects on other parameters (pupil diameter, fixation disparity, saccades, and microsaccades), but they were moderated by task type. Single-trial analysis of our data using machine learning techniques further confirmed our results: Classifying the focus of attention by means of eye tracking works well across participants, but generalizing across tasks proves to be challenging. Based on the effects of task type on eye parameters, we discuss what eye parameters are best suited as indicators of internal versus external attentional focus in different settings.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1111/cogs.12977
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Internally directed cognition, Internal attentional focus, Eye behavior, Pupillometry, Microsaccades, Fixation disparity, LSTM, Machine learning
Journal
45
Issue
ISSN
Citations 
4
0364-0213
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Sonja Annerer-Walcher100.34
Simon M Ceh200.34
Felix Putze320529.73
Marvin Kampen400.34
Christof Körner500.34
Mathias Benedek600.34