Véronique Drai-Zerbib

E-readers and visual fatigue.

The mass digitization of books is changing the way information is created, disseminated and displayed. Electronic book readers (e-readers) generally refer to two main display technologies: the electronic ink (E-ink) and the liquid crystal display (LCD). Both technologies have advantages and disadvantages, but the question whether one or the other triggers less visual fatigue is still open. The aim of the present research was to study the effects of the display technology on visual fatigue. To this end, participants performed a longitudinal study in which two last generation e-readers (LCD, E-ink) and paper book were tested in three different prolonged reading sessions separated by - on average - ten days. Results from both objective (Blinks per second) and subjective (Visual Fatigue Scale) measures suggested that reading on the LCD (Kindle Fire HD) triggers higher visual fatigue with respect to both the E-ink (Kindle Paperwhite) and the paper book. The absence of differences between E-ink and paper suggests that, concerning visual fatigue, the E-ink is indeed very similar to the paper.

Effects of luminance and illuminance on visual fatigue and arousal during digital reading

We studied the effect of luminance and illuminance on visual fatigue and arousal.We employed an approach based on eye, performance and subjective measures.Higher levels of screen luminance increase visual fatigue.Higher levels of either screen luminance or ambient illuminance increase arousal.Findings might have practical implications for adaptive brightness solutions. We investigated the conjoint effect of screen luminance and ambient illuminance on visual fatigue and arousal during prolonged digital reading (one hour) by means of a multidimensional approach based on eye, performance and subjective measures. Two levels of screen luminance (low, high) and two levels of ambient illuminance (low, high) were tested in a 2×2 between-subjects design in which participants were arbitrarily allocated to four groups, one for each combined level of luminance and illuminance. Results showed that reading under high levels of screen luminance increases visual fatigue, as reflected by a decrease of eye blinks. Concerning arousal, exposure to higher levels of either luminance or illuminance increased alertness and performance. Faster saccades, increased reading speed and less microsaccades were found under high screen luminance. Fewer regressive saccades and shorter reaction times were observed under high ambient illuminance. However, the reason why some of these measures are sensitive to screen luminance while other to ambient illuminance remains unknown. These findings might have practical implications for the implementation of adaptive brightness solutions and for the online detection of both visual fatigue and arousal levels during digital reading.

Sight-reading expertise: cross-modality integration investigated using eye tracking.

It is often said that experienced musicians are capable of hearing what they read (and vice versa). This suggests that they are able to process and to integrate multimodal information. The present study investigates this issue with an eye-tracking technique. Two groups of musicians chosen on the basis of their level of expertise (experts, non-experts) had to read excerpts of poorly-known classical piano music and play them on a keyboard. The experiment was run in two consecutive phases during which each excerpt was (1) read without playing and (2) sight-read (read and played). In half the conditions, the participants heard the music before the reading phases. The excerpts contained suggested fingering of variable difficulty (difficult, easy, or no fingering). Analyses of first-pass fixation duration, second-pass fixation duration, probability of re-fixation, and playing mistakes validated the hypothesized modal independence of information among expert musicians as compared to non-experts. The results are discussed in terms of the processing cues and retrieval structures postulated by Ericsson and Kintsch (1995) in their model of expert memory.

A regression-based method for the prediction of the indecisiveness degree through eye movement patterns

The development of eye-tracking-based methods to describe a persons indecisiveness is not commonly explored, even though research has shown that indecisiveness is involved in many unwanted cognitive states, such as a reduction in self-confidence during the decision-making process, doubts about past decisions, reconsidering, trepidation, distractibility, procrastination, neuroticism and even revenge. The purpose of our work is to propose a predictive model of a subjects degree of indecisiveness. To reach this goal, we first need to extract statistically relevant. Using eye-tracking methodology, we build a list of patterns that best distinguish decisive people from indecisive people; this segmentation is made according to the state of the art. The final list of eye-tracking patterns is also coherent with the state of art. A comparison between Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) and Support Vector Regression (SVR) is made so as to select the best predictive model.

Degree of Subject’s Indecisiveness Characterized by Eye Movement Patterns in Increasingly Difficult Tasks

The development of eye-tracking-based methods to describe a person’s indecisiveness is not commonly explored, even though research has shown that indecisiveness is involved in many unwanted cognitive states, such as a reduction in self-confidence during the decision-making process, doubts about past decisions, reconsidering, trepidation, distractibility, procrastination, neuroticism, and even revenge. The purpose of our work is to propose a predictive model of a subject’s degree of decisiveness, either “indecisive” or “decisive.” To reach this goal, we needed to extract descriptors that clearly distinguished both states. Using eye-tracking methodology, we then studied the reactions of different subjects in response to several types of stimuli.