The World (of Warcraft) through the eyes of an expert

Visual expertise is more than meets the eye: an examination of holistic visual processing in radiologists and architects

Purpose

One of the dominant behavioral markers of visual-expert search strategy, holistic visual processing (HVP), suggests that experts process information from a larger region of space in conjunction with a more focused gaze pattern to improve search speed and accuracy. To date, extant literature suggests that visual search expertise is domain specific, including HVP and its associated behaviors.

Approach

The current study is the first to use eye tracking to directly measure the HVP strategies of two expert groups, radiologists and architects, in comparison to one another and a novice control.

Results

In doing so, we replicated and extended this prior research: visual expertise is domain specific. However, our eye-tracking data indicate that contrary to this prior work, HVP strategies are transferable across domains. Yet, despite the transfer of HVP strategies, there is neither reduced search time nor greater accuracy in visual search outside of an expert's domain.

Conclusions

Therefore, our data suggest that HVP behaviors are a particular form of visual search mechanism that, outside of an expert's native search-ecology, are not necessarily conducive to more general visual search success. It is in addition to explicit knowledge of an expert's domain, how to search, and where to search, that HVP strategies are their most effective for visual search success.

Pupillometry: Psychology, Physiology, and Function

Pupils respond to three distinct kinds of stimuli: they constrict in response to brightness (the pupil light response), constrict in response to near fixation (the pupil near response), and dilate in response to increases in arousal and mental effort, either triggered by an external stimulus or spontaneously. In this review, I describe these three pupil responses, how they are related to high-level cognition, and the neural pathways that control them. I also discuss the functional relevance of pupil responses, that is, how pupil responses help us to better see the world. Although pupil responses likely serve many functions, not all of which are fully understood, one important function is to optimize vision either for acuity (small pupils see sharper) and depth of field (small pupils see sharply at a wider range of distances), or for sensitivity (large pupils are better able to detect faint stimuli); that is, pupils change their size to optimize vision for a particular situation. In many ways, pupil responses are similar to other eye movements, such as saccades and smooth pursuit: like these other eye movements, pupil responses have properties of both reflexive and voluntary action, and are part of active visual exploration.