scholarly journals Cognitive Style and Information Visualization—Modeling Users Through Eye Gaze Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Steichen ◽  
Bo Fu

Information visualizations can be regarded as one of the most powerful cognitive tools to significantly amplify human cognition. However, traditional information visualization systems have been designed in a manner that does not consider individual user differences, even though human cognitive abilities and styles have been shown to differ significantly. In order to address this research gap, novel adaptive systems need to be developed that are able to (1) infer individual user characteristics and (2) provide an adaptation mechanism to personalize the system to the inferred characteristic. This paper presents a first step toward this goal by investigating the extent to which a user's cognitive style can be inferred from their behavior with an information visualization system. In particular, this paper presents a series of experiments that utilize features calculated from user eye gaze data in order to infer a user's cognitive style. Several different data and feature sets are presented, and results overall show that a user's eye gaze data can be used successfully to infer a user's cognitive style during information visualization usage.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Moritz Spiller ◽  
Ying-Hsang Liu ◽  
Md Zakir Hossain ◽  
Tom Gedeon ◽  
Julia Geissler ◽  
...  

Information visualizations are an efficient means to support the users in understanding large amounts of complex, interconnected data; user comprehension, however, depends on individual factors such as their cognitive abilities. The research literature provides evidence that user-adaptive information visualizations positively impact the users’ performance in visualization tasks. This study attempts to contribute toward the development of a computational model to predict the users’ success in visual search tasks from eye gaze data and thereby drive such user-adaptive systems. State-of-the-art deep learning models for time series classification have been trained on sequential eye gaze data obtained from 40 study participants’ interaction with a circular and an organizational graph. The results suggest that such models yield higher accuracy than a baseline classifier and previously used models for this purpose. In particular, a Multivariate Long Short Term Memory Fully Convolutional Network shows encouraging performance for its use in online user-adaptive systems. Given this finding, such a computational model can infer the users’ need for support during interaction with a graph and trigger appropriate interventions in user-adaptive information visualization systems. This facilitates the design of such systems since further interaction data like mouse clicks is not required.


2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1803) ◽  
pp. 20190495 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Uomini ◽  
Joanna Fairlie ◽  
Russell D. Gray ◽  
Michael Griesser

Traditional attempts to understand the evolution of human cognition compare humans with other primates. This research showed that relative brain size covaries with cognitive skills, while adaptations that buffer the developmental and energetic costs of large brains (e.g. allomaternal care), and ecological or social benefits of cognitive abilities, are critical for their evolution. To understand the drivers of cognitive adaptations, it is profitable to consider distant lineages with convergently evolved cognitions. Here, we examine the facilitators of cognitive evolution in corvid birds, where some species display cultural learning, with an emphasis on family life. We propose that extended parenting (protracted parent–offspring association) is pivotal in the evolution of cognition: it combines critical life-history, social and ecological conditions allowing for the development and maintenance of cognitive skillsets that confer fitness benefits to individuals. This novel hypothesis complements the extended childhood idea by considering the parents' role in juvenile development. Using phylogenetic comparative analyses, we show that corvids have larger body sizes, longer development times, extended parenting and larger relative brain sizes than other passerines. Case studies from two corvid species with different ecologies and social systems highlight the critical role of life-history features on juveniles’ cognitive development: extended parenting provides a safe haven, access to tolerant role models, reliable learning opportunities and food, resulting in higher survival. The benefits of extended juvenile learning periods, over evolutionary time, lead to selection for expanded cognitive skillsets. Similarly, in our ancestors, cooperative breeding and increased group sizes facilitated learning and teaching. Our analyses highlight the critical role of life-history, ecological and social factors that underlie both extended parenting and expanded cognitive skillsets. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1051
Author(s):  
Si Jung Kim ◽  
Teemu H. Laine ◽  
Hae Jung Suk

Presence refers to the emotional state of users where their motivation for thinking and acting arises based on the perception of the entities in a virtual world. The immersion level of users can vary when they interact with different media content, which may result in different levels of presence especially in a virtual reality (VR) environment. This study investigates how user characteristics, such as gender, immersion level, and emotional valence on VR, are related to the three elements of presence effects (attention, enjoyment, and memory). A VR story was created and used as an immersive stimulus in an experiment, which was presented through a head-mounted display (HMD) equipped with an eye tracker that collected the participants’ eye gaze data during the experiment. A total of 53 university students (26 females, 27 males), with an age range from 20 to 29 years old (mean 23.8), participated in the experiment. A set of pre- and post-questionnaires were used as a subjective measure to support the evidence of relationships among the presence effects and user characteristics. The results showed that user characteristics, such as gender, immersion level, and emotional valence, affected their level of presence, however, there is no evidence that attention is associated with enjoyment or memory.


2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 93-109
Author(s):  
Miljana Milojevic

The aim of this paper is to show how a new outlook on human cognitive abilities, and in accordance with this a different view of rationality, can influence semantics and one of the most prominent debates in this field, namely, conflict between Fregeans and non Fregean anti-indiviidualists. This new account of rationality will help us difuse some of the main motivators for Fregean view of semantics and it will help us in justifying non-Fregean anti-individualism but also in eliminating some of the apparent contradictions in Fregean anti-individualism of, e.g. Campbell and Evans. In this attempt of bringing together some of the latest insights into human cognition and semantics I will be dealing mainly with Jessica Brown's outlook on motivation for Fregean sense and Ruth Millikan's embedded view on rationality.


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