Helmholtz lecture Wolfgang Einhäuser, November 25: Attention and gaze in real and virtual worlds

Helmholtz lecture Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Einhäuser-Treyer (Chemnitz University of Technology):

Title: Attention and gaze in real and virtual worlds

Abstract: When studying real-world behavior, experimenters face a trade-off 
between ecological validity and experimental control. On the one hand 
stimuli and task shall be as realistic as possible, while on the other 
hand all relevant variables shall be carefully controlled. In my talk, 
I will present examples how we use virtual reality (VR) to tackle this 
tradeoff for studying attention and gaze. The talk will start with 
results from scene-viewing experiments – how do image features 
influence where participants look at and how long they dwell there? To 
what extent are the contributions of these features causal or driven 
by their relations to higher-order scene structure and what role does 
the task play? Real-world free-exploration data will highlight that 
not only the task, but also constraints imposed by the environment and 
implicit goals (e.g., ensuring safe gait) modulate human gaze 
behavior. Using a high-fidelity VR reconstruction of a real-world 
office building and a novel control technique for navigating through 
the VR, we directly compare gaze behavior between the real world and 
its virtual copy. This allows us to use the VR setting to investigate 
scenarios that would be impossible to test in the real world, for 
example to evaluate different visual displays that aid participants in 
fighting fires. To modulate environmental constraints, we use a setup 
that combines VR with high-precision motion capture and a 
high-performance dual-belt treadmill. With this setup, we perturb 
participants’ gait (i.e., we make them slip in a realistic – yet 
controlled and safe – manner) and measure the effect of these 
perturbations on the interaction between their gaze and their gait 
stability under a variety of modulatory influences. Such data may 
eventually be useful to decrease the risk of falling in the real world 
– a risk that presents major healthy burden, especially in an aging 
population. This again highlights the importance to study attention 
and gaze under conditions that are as realistic, as safe, and as 
controlled as possible and how VR can be used to fulfill these demands 
simultaneously.

Location: Ruppert Rood, Leuvenlaan 21, 3584 CE Utrecht

Helmholtz Lectures take place from 4 to 5pm, with drinks afterwards in the pantry of the Langeveld building. Lectures are hybrid and streamed live via Teams.

Helmholtz agenda: https://helmholtzschool.nl/category/agenda/

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